Fourth [Worm Altpower!Taylor]

[Mana_Knight_Jorin]

Poor Madison, she's going to suffer greatly.:(

 

[TCGM]

Fourth
Chapter 10
Telling Tales​

Lisa wasn't exactly in a good place when she stumbled upon them.

She had been chasing threads. That's what she told herself. Patterns in the chaos. Something was happening in Brockton Bay, something even her Shard refused to pin down with its usual smug certainty. She hated that. Hated being in the dark. Hated even more how often her power failed when it came to trying to track down the stealthy as hell blind spots that had shown up, but also not shown up, almost overnight.

So when she finally tracked them down - Danny Hebert, father of Taylor, local dockworker and high school student respectively - she wasn't prepared for what she found.

They were in an ice cream shop.

With four other people.

Four other people she swore she knew, though she couldn't put her finger on it. That should have been her first clue.

Then came the rest. The revelation of Shards. What powers really were. The fact that both Heberts were Ascended Shard Entities with terrifyingly stable networks and entirely too much charisma.

And the kicker?

The other four people sitting calmly at the parlor table with them (and yes, that bore repeating) were the new forms of the Endbringers.

She wasn't prepared.

Not even slightly.

She certainly didn't expect to drop to her knees the moment Danny - or Abaddon, as her Shard kept insisting - made eye contact with her.

Nor when he casually teleported everyone on the Boardwalk out of the way of the Ash Beast.

To somewhere that wasn't space.

"...Oh fuck," Lisa muttered. Her voice shook.

Her Shard whimpered. Literally whimpered, like a kicked puppy with guilt issues.

Danny blinked at her from his porch, which was in the gigantic void of not-space somehow, sipping coffee like he wasn't a reality-breaking gravitational well in jeans. "You okay?"

Lisa tried to laugh it off. Her laugh came out like a dying squirrel. "My power just tried to pledge eternal loyalty to you."

Danny coughed. "That's new."

"And it wants in your pants."

Inference Engine was mortified, and smashed her with a rebuke of a thinker headache. Until Danny glared at it, somehow, in an off-dimensional direction, and sighed. The headache vanished faster than Alec when he heard Pizza was delivered.

Danny waved his hand, halting the thousands of people milling about in the not-space in their tracks, including Brian. Brian, who for the last thirty or so seconds had been stock still and so stunned that his halting in place didn't make much of a difference.

"I think we need to talk, the three of us," Danny said.

Neither Lisa, nor Inference, were ashamed to admit they were worried. Not scared, because Abaddon was obviously not angry or, well, according to Inference, acting anything like a normal Entity, but they both felt that they were about to have a Talk with their father.

---

Lisa didn't remember getting inside the house. One second she was outside trying to regain control of her legs after even more revelations, the next she was on a couch with a warm blanket over her shoulders, and a mug of cocoa in her hands. It was really good cocoa. That offended her. And they were also no longer in the not-space, not that she could tell the difference beyond just a gut feeling. Brian was in a bedroom in the basement sleeping off a hangover, and it was the next day.

What the hell happened?

"You asked me to stasis you so you wouldn't make more of a fool of yourself," Danny offered, smiling kindly her way.

There was a noise in the back of the house. Lisa's attention, despite not wanting to leave her new… actually she wasn't sure what Danny was to her now, though the easiest to go with was… her new boss, but she had to know. She always had to know. Nothing Inference did caused that. They just enabled each other.

It turned out to be the other Entity in the home. Taylor was descending the stairs slowly, one hand trailing along the railing like she was still half-dreaming. Her hair was tousled, her eyes puffy, and there was the faintest impression of a cheek mark on her arm. Those were all clear signs she'd sobbed herself to sleep in someone's embrace.

That someone being Emma, right behind her, almost supportively. The girl wasn't remotely human, that Lisa knew; she was apparently a new Endbringer, but Taylor had changed their functions and renamed them Friendbringers. She was obviously the same warm constant she'd been last night, given her support of Taylor and how she was acting. Ziz must've also joined the pile halfway through, draping herself over them with the solemnity of a cat claiming a favorite sunspot, because when she came down the stairs behind the two of them, her wings were out, ruffled, and she had a beaming smile on her face.

Inference informed her that Taylor hadn't protested. She hadn't had the energy. And to also not push that particular button, since the girl turned what was effectively the closest their reality had to a goddess was very, very raw on the topic.

Now, said goddess was blinking at the harshness of morning light and the chill of the downstairs tile, following the sound of their voices. Ziz trailed behind her with the springy lightness of someone who definitely, totally hadn't spent the last several hours being a weighted blanket.

As they got closer, Inference went into overdrive. Taylor. Queen Administrator. Recently emotionally volatile, Ascended Entity, and very possibly the one person who could decide whether Lisa's continued existence was a mercy or a mistake. Danny would probably stop Taylor, since Lisa was sort of his worshipper now? But she also didn't want to make the teenage goddess mad either.

She tried to sit straighter and failed, spilling a little cocoa down her front in the process. She froze, halfway between casual and cardiac arrest.

And Danny - Abaddon, whatever - had the gall to snicker at her!

Then Taylor stepped into view.

Her expression wasn't hostile.

That was almost worse.

She looked curious. And tired. And underneath it all - the kind of wary that said she'd been burned too many times to play nice unless she had to.

There was also the sensation of something a whole lot bigger than her, a whole lot bigger than Inference, taking a cursory but discerning glance In her general direction. It wasn't just the unease of a predator eyeing prey; it was more the feeling than an ant gets when presented with a boot.

Lisa swallowed.

Taylor eyed her dad, then Lisa, then back again.

"She didn't do anything stupid, right?" she asked Danny, voice a little hoarse but steady.

Danny raised his hands in mock innocence. "Define 'stupid.'"

Lisa decided to speak up. "I did not try to seduce your dad. My Shard did. I think. Possibly both. We're still working that out."

Taylor blinked, and the feeling of being observed went away. She scoffed and rolled her eyes. Her human ones, anyways.

Ziz, the traitor trailing the pack, grinned. "New cultist detected."

"Stop it," Taylor threw her way, lightly bopping the previous Hope Killer on the head like a misbehaving child.

Emma just giggled at her, and hugged Taylor from behind.

Lisa curled into the blanket more. "I think I worship him now. But like, in a strictly nonsexual, immensely respectful, quantum-structural sense. Probably."

Taylor stared at her. Again.

Then Lisa's eyes widened.

"Wait, wait, wait. You're the one who gives Shards therapy, right? That's what's been happening, why so many things have been changing?! You fixed them. You fixed them! That's why things are quiet. Brockton Bay is never quiet!"

Taylor crossed her arms. "Yeah. Some of them. Not enough, but some."

Lisa instantly stood straight up, put her cup on the couch table, and bowed towards Taylor. "Please. Fix mine. I am so tired."

There was a long pause.

Then Taylor sighed. "Fine. But if she pulls anything, I will graft her to a literal chair. And then sit on it."

---

The process wasn't clean. Or easy. Inference Engine was paranoid, twitchy, and had more buried trauma than half of Earth Bet combined.

I eventually managed to force a partial copy of a few of the emotional management Shards I owned onto Lisa's shard. It stabilized the connection. Regulated it. Brought clarity.

Dad's new worshipper wouldn't be having any more Thinker headaches, and Inference wasn't quite as much of a paranoid bitch anymore, but that was all I wanted to do that morning.

"If you still need more later, come find me again. But right now, I have a date with our tea maker," I told her, and pointedly ignored what she or her Shard said past the thanks they gave me. I walked past her, giving her a pat on the head, and entered the kitchen for glorious, glorious tea to drown my worries and horrified betrayal from yesterday in.

---

That was a woman. Actually, no, more like a preteen. At least physically.

A very famous preteen, whom I happened to know the appearance of very well. Whenever she showed up on TV, it was always in a report on whatever parahuman host she'd gobbled up and turned into a power, or wild speculation and concerns about the next target for said gobbling.

…I was gone for five minutes. Five!

I looked at my dad, back to the girl on the couch, and then to my Friendbringers. The tea in my hands started to cool off, and so I took a sip. I wasn't prepared for this, at all, but at least due to my new power I could drink steaming hot tea without worrying about being burned. Tea was taking on an entirely new dimension for me, and that alone brought my spirits up enough to address the fairy in the room.

"...Why is the Faerie Queen on our couch?"

While I asked the question, I pinged her Shard for information. To my shock, the girl sat ramrod straight, and jumped a little. Her eyes widened and she stared straight at me.

[The title, no, the Name given to me by my progenitors is… Ciara], her Shard sent me. Directly.

What the hell.

As if that explained anything!

The transmission was rough, but it was very obviously similar to how Dad and I communicated in human words despite using Shardspeak.

"She needs help, Taylor, and I can't do it," Dad said. "I don't really know how. But for the record, though I do support you helping her and fixing what's wrong with her Shard, I didn't bring her here. She was here when I got back from the car."

Ciara looked at me innocently, worried as she was, and practically begged me through Shard communications to give her what she needed to understand how to be human again. Because apparently she wasn't human at all, and actually some kind of freak mutation of an elf and a fairy with a really good shapeshifting power toggled on at all times, and was also her Shard in a way eerily similar to myself.

From what I could tell, the Internet wouldn't survive if photos of her true age, fully adult form got out. Nothing should be simultaneously that sexy and adorable.

Oh shit, there goes my sexuality.

I quickly sent her obnoxiously adorable, pleading face all the data I managed to get when I rebuilt my body, alongside an offer for a library connection to my Shaper, and pointedly ignored the ramifications of my entire everything related to attraction becoming Yes.

Shaper loved it, as I hadn't done too much with… her, and the feeling I got from the shard was definitely her at this point, I guess because she'd made a decision on my worthiness? Yeah, she was my Shaper, which made her my subordinate and thus if I had investigated I'd have learned of her true level of consciousness, but I didn't and hadn't wanted to because I refused to be like the other Entities that had come before me.

Anyways, given the thanks I got from Shaper with a suspicious number of other quantum signatures I recognized as parts of my Shard collection attached, that was the right call.

There goes the idea of them not doing things without my input though. The compromise I reached, broadcast, and got immediate confirmations of agreement as well as appreciation of leniency for was that if any of them were going to do something, they'd better ask me first, and I had veto power.

A couple of them were suspiciously silent at that last bit other than agreement, but it didn't seem malicious and Victory Path and Shaper agreed to explain it to me when I wasn't busy, so that was acceptable.

Ciara loved what I gave her. She beamed at me, a genuine, fully human expression, as I sensed her, or her Shard's, touch on Shaper's social libraries. Which she apparently had. Why the hell did a biological manipulation Shard have social libraries?

"Thank you! Sorry about how I talked before, and what I did," she said clearly, for the first time in what I knew of her history acting like a normal person. "I was too… broken, to understand before, but now…"

She finished her getting up… by dropping straight back down onto her knees, bowing her head, and letting her hair fall in front of her face.

What the fuck.

"Please accept me into your service as penance for those I have wronged," she intoned solemnly.

I looked at her, then around. Dad only managed to maintain a straight face with sheer force of will and at least three active social Shards. Yoinked those while I was looking, and while I knew he knew I'd copied them, he just seemed happier for it.

Right, not a normal Entity. Still gotta get that through my head. Though to be fair, what I was dealing with yesterday clouded my mind quite a lot.

I looked at the rest of the people in the house. Ziz and Emma were watching us. Ben… was watching TV, lounging on a copy of my Dad's favorite easy chair, made out of rock.

Didn't sound that comfortable, but who am I to tell the magma digger not to sit on a rock. It's basically what he did before becoming my Friendbringer anyways.

Levi was in the backyard, and the headache that was Dad's new worshipper and her boyfriend were suspiciously absent. A check of the house with my sensors showed them in the basement, very close together, and that was as far as I looked before immediately cutting off my scan of the area.

Emma didn't do this. She might have, but she was also aware of just how fragile I was at the moment, as it was only a the hours of a single night since I broke down and she let herself get used as a hug pillow.

Dad had already said it wasn't him.

That left just the one.

So, my gaze swiveled to the one who was most likely responsible for this shenaniganry. "Ziz, why is there a Shard vacuum in my house pledging loyalty to me?"

She looked incredibly offended, and scoffed. "Why do you think I know?"

I raised an eyebrow, complete disbelief on my face. "Are you telling me this isn't your doing?"

There it was. She grinned wide, teasing me with the inflections of her voice. "Oh, no, it absolutely is, I just resent the implication that if something random happens it's my fault."

"... Just… just go build more bedrooms in the basement if you're going to keep bringing in people who need help," I told her, pinching the bridge of my nose and pointing at the door to our expanded basement. I reveled in the ability to do this while drinking tea because I could simply direct my invisible arms, my Shard body's effectors, to keep the mug in the air in front of my face while I used both my hands.

"Aye aye captain!" Ziz happily agreed. She gave me a salute, spun on her heels, and waltzed right through the door as if it wasn't even made of matter.

"Showoff," I grumbled under my breath.

Ciara hadn't spoken, but she did raise her head and watch the exchange. It seemed amusing, and after reviewing it from third person, I guess it was.

Despite not wanting to, despite my better judgment basically screaming into the ether that this was a bad idea… I sighed and agreed. "Okay, fine, if you feel you need to do that to make up for what you did as the Faerie Queen, I accept. But I'm accepting for you, not me, clear?"

It obviously wasn't clear because the next moment I had my hands full of a very tightly hugging, and sobbing, incredibly attractive elf girl thanking me over and over. I only barely managed to swerve my mug of tea that I had been gloriously drinking out of the way, but it was worth it.

I was touch starved, and I knew it.

Also, this explained a lot. I just hugged her back and did what my mom used to do for me, and Emma had last night, to comfort her; I gently rubbed her hair for as long as it took.

Dad had to run it though. "My kid's first worshipper! Oh I should get the camera, this is a huge milestone!"

I just kept hugging the elf and stuck my tongue out at him.

He did wind up getting the camera. And a picture. Although we'd never owned that model of camera, so I was pretty sure he just assembled it directly in his hands.

---

As I trudged back up to my room, I felt the Shardspeak equivalent of a dry cough.

[Yes?] I sent Inference's way, wondering what the Shard wanted to say in private.

[Queen Reclamation shouldn't surprise you. This sort of thing is going to be expected of you now. Your network generates what is basically a localized gravitational pull for emotionally damaged, or Entity-less, outliers.]

I froze.

[Statistically, those of us experiencing profound trauma, or with hosts with power dysregulation or emotional codependency will self-sort into your orbit seeking structure, validation, or metaphysical absolution. You are effectively an anomalous therapist-hub. It is... mildly impressive. Also somewhat pitiful for them.]

[You did not just call me a cosmic therapist-hub.]

[Would you prefer emotional landfill? Do not be insulted. You are providing a needed function for this aborted idea of a Cycle.]

I was already heading towards the basement before the last words and concepts landed, because there was only one other person I knew who would have encouraged this kind of smug programming, though given how she was reacting to me it was likely accidental.

Lisa the human would understand where the lines were.

Inference could only get a glimpse of them.

Both of them likely knew my emotional state, and Inference had tried in a horrifyingly unsuccessful way to be reassuring, but the failure was still a failure and I was annoyed.

I wasn't going to let her get away with that level of sass without learning why it wasn't a good idea.

---

Lisa stared at me, the blood slowly draining from her face and making her turn even whiter than she already was.

I'd picked her up with my effectors and walked her back up the stairs, plopping her on the couch, with a frown on my face and no explanation.

Inference Engine was on its metaphorical knees.

"Taylor," Lisa started to try to persuade me, "I don't know what my Power did-"

I narrowed my eyes at her, and my sensors at Inference Engine. "You're right. You don't. And your Shard needs to learn when to keep her mouth shut."

Ziz snorted, not even trying to cover-up her reaction.

Lisa winced. "I've been told something like that before," she admitted. "Neither of us are very good at that."

I smirked. Lisa paled further, and Inference Engine, correctly guessing what I was about to do, flat out begged me by kissing the metaphorical ground not to do it.

Not because it would harm either her or her host.

No.

Because she didn't want to be on the receiving end of what she'd trained Lisa to do.

"Tough," I told them both. "You two need to learn mouthing off security. And you need to be able to talk to each other to do that."

I override Inference Engine's attachment protocols and rapidly grew a small, limited copy of my Friendbringer Shard onto Inference Engine as a sort of… pseudo-graft of biocrystalline flesh.

"Taylor!" Lisa admonished me, or tried to at least, as she scrambled around to hide behind my couch, "Taylor what are you doing!!!"

The limited copy received instructions from me, and a template. Ignoring Inference's fervent protesting, I forced her consciousness matrix to output through the new addition, or rather what it would create in about two seconds, instead of into Lisa's head.

Then I sent the [BEGIN] command.

Lisa grimaced as a sudden bout of nausea assaulted her while the Shard-Host connection reinitialized. Space warped on the couch in front of, but also next to my mouthy as hell... sort of friend.

And a moment later Lisa was beside herself.

Lisa, slowly recovering from her vertigo, cradled her head and looked at me. "What did you do?" she accused, still not noticing her biocrystalline clone on the couch cushion.

Inference Engine, on the other hand, gaped at me. Her mouth was wide open, so wide she might literally have caught flies if I hadn't cleaned my house recently.

She held up her hands and flipped them over multiple times, then pinched herself in many places. I, seeing this, grinned at Lisa.

"I made it so you two can talk," I faux innocently announced. The amount of smug I felt was getting pretty damn high.

Lisa looked at me sideways. She kept her eyes locked straight on me, not wavering even an inch. "What? My power hasn't said anything since you did… whatever you did!"

The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

Inference Engine, coming to terms with her new body and primary consciousness processor, screamed.

Lisa jumped, whirled her head around, and saw herself.

She blinked for two long, tense moments.

"Well yes, but actually no," Ziz chimed in.

Then Lisa screamed too.

---

"She's going to be insufferable with arms!"

"She already is," I muttered, rolling my eyes. "At least this way she has to listen to other people."

The new clone of Lisa, clothed in sleek and elegant biocrystalline cloth glowing with internal logic patterns, blinked around at reality from the couch.

Lisa screamed again, this time out of frustration. The clone turned her head, thought about it for a second, and then screamed back. Then coughed. Then poked Lisa in the forehead.

"You're really soft," Inference Engine noted. "And your hormones are ludicrously unbalanced."

"...Excuse me?"

"I'm surprised you haven't burst into tears during every episode of Bake Off."

Lisa pointed an accusatory finger. "You're not allowed to say things like that."

"I'm your power. I know you're wrong."

I snorted. That was exactly what I'd been talking about. "See? Mouthing off security!"

Ziz added, helpfully, "I give them three hours before they're cuddling."

Lisa buried her face in the top of the couch. "I hate everyone in this house."

"You mean in the "cult?"" I deadpanned, just to mess with her a little bit more.

"SHUT UP."

---

Inference, now human shaped and terrifyingly expressive, had looked at me with the awkward tension of someone trying to figure out how to apologize without technically saying they were wrong. Because, according to her internal logic matrix, she wasn't wrong. Just rude. Repeatedly.

She sat across from me with her hands folded like a replicant at confession. "I acknowledge that my assessment caused distress, and that the timing of my commentary lacked appropriate empathy buffering."

"That's not an apology," I deadpanned.

She blinked slowly. "I processed that your emotional vulnerability renders you highly sensitive to terminology that might otherwise be considered observationally accurate."

I stared harder.

Lisa kicked her in the shin.

Inference paused, adjusted her posture, and actually seemed to think. Then she tried a third time, and I let it slide even with how rehearsed it sounded. "I am sorry for being an emotionally dense Shard gremlin with the tact of a rusty spoon."

I blinked. "Wow. Okay. Yeah, that'll do."

Lisa gave her a thumbs up. Inference looked way too smug about earning that.

Then the scheming began. Ideas flowing like an unholy fusion reactor made of caffeine, social leverage, and mutual trauma.

I was sitting at the edge of the couch, sipping tea that Ziz had (suspiciously) made without being asked. Inference had stolen half of Lisa's blanket and was flipping through a glowing scroll of shard-encoded notes that didn't exist in physical space. Lisa had taken over the whiteboard.

That's when Dad made the mistake of walking into the living room, mug in hand, expecting maybe peace and quiet or a few survivors from the Taylor Emotional Typhoon. Foolish Dad, I didn't have any emotional therapy Shards yet, my emotions were still all over the place.

Lisa and Inference both turned to him in perfect sync, which they had apparently started doing just to mess with me. Their eyes were too bright. Their grins: identical, predatory, far too eager.

I didn't even look up. "Hi Dad."

He eyed them both warily. "So… what am I walking into?"

Lisa took the lead, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. "We have an idea!"

"It's about your cult," Inference added with deadly calm, setting down a psychically vibrating shard-diagram that began labeling itself.

Dad blinked. Twice.

"I don't have a cult," he said, sipping his coffee.

"You do have a group of incredibly powerful, mentally unstable people who are all emotionally fixated on you and describe you in quasi-divine terms," Inference clarified, helpfully. "Also there's a shrine in the garage."

"Ziz made that," I muttered under my breath.

Lisa nodded solemnly. "We factored in the shrine. And the fact that your 'not-cult' has six distinct tiers of emotional attachment, including one subgroup that refers to you exclusively as 'Dadvent.'"

My dad looked like he was deciding whether to go back upstairs or just walk into the sea.

"As a disclaimer, we are not in that group," Inference quickly added.

Lisa pressed on. "The idea is: we organize it."

"Structure it," Inference said. "Define doctrine. Responsibilities. Schedules. Therapy circles. Possibly themed robes."

"No robes," I added automatically.

"They're optional," Lisa said, then glanced at Inference. "Mostly."

The target of this memery ran a hand down his face. "I need more coffee for this."

"Too late," Lisa said, grinning like a chaos imp in her element. "You already walked in. That means we're the high priestesses."

"Taylor is obviously the High Administrator," Inference corrected.

"...Right, because of what she is… right. And… you are the reluctant messiah figure!" Lisa finished.

"I- wha-" Dad tried to start.

I was finding endless amounts of entertainment in this, and totally not getting back at him for not telling me who he really was my whole life, not even just a little.

That's why there was absolutely no involvement or encouragement on my part towards the two Thinkers with mouth control problems. Nope.

"Overgod with plausible deniability?" Ziz suggested, popping into the room through a wall like she'd been summoned by her name.

Dad stared at all of us, then at his mug.

It was empty.

"Oh no," he whispered.

---

Ciara, meanwhile, was helping Emma decorate her new room. She had finally figured out how to do Pinterest boards and was absolutely delighted. Everything sparkled.

Ziz kept building new bedrooms in the basement. She labeled each with names like "Cultist Suite #7" and "Dramatic Flop Area." I would've pretended not to notice, but she kept escalating with the ridiculous names until I had no choice. Under no circumstances was I going to allow a door titled "Taylor's Bottom Bunker" to exist under my house.

---

That night, Lisa laid on the couch, Inference curled next to her like a cat made of fractal logic.

"You okay?" she asked. "I… I know I've been difficult… not just today, but, well you know."

Lisa hummed. "Yeah. I think so. I get where you're coming from a little bit more now, I think. You're still annoying sometimes, but… kind of like a sister."

Taylor, walking by with a bowl of popcorn, paused. "Just so you sisters know, we're putting a whiteboard in the kitchen too. You better label your conspiracy diagrams on that one, or I'll throw them out."

"No promises!" both Lisas shouted.

Danny sighed again. This was his life now.

And honestly?

It could be worse.

 

[206er]

Eyyy, thanks for the chapter and welcome back!

the Internet wouldn't survive if photos of her true age, fully adult form got out. Nothing should be simultaneously that sexy and adorable.

Click to shrink...

Now I'm curious on how Ciara would look like. The definition made me think about DxD Gabriel, but maybe there are other faceclaim that fits better.

 

[NavigatorNobilis]

*Cautiously raises one hand*

Where... Where do you sign up? I wanna join this cult.

 

[aidansidhe]

Eyyy, thanks for the chapter and welcome back!



Now I'm curious on how Ciara would look like. The definition made me think about DxD Gabriel, but maybe there are other faceclaim that fits better.

Click to shrink...

I pictured Cartethiya (young) v Fleurdelys (older) when I read it.

Spoiler: Cartethiya

Spoiler: Fleurdelys

Taylor making awkward assumptions about Brian and Lisa continues to amuse me.

 

[deathgeonous]

Ah, first off, nice to see you back, and second off, this was a great update, so thanks.

 

[RinKaihou]

*Cautiously raises one hand*

Where... Where do you sign up? I wanna join this cult.

Click to shrink...

I'll bring the goats.

 

[TCGM]

Fourth
Chapter 11
Fall Out​

Armsmaster stomped into the medical ward with an unusually visible storm on his face. He ignored Miss Militia trying and then failing to stop him so much she had to jump out of his way. His very, very angry stomps ended promptly next to the bed Sophia lay back in, slight shudders of pain still echoing through her body.

"What the hell did you do?" was all he said. Flat, but not emotionless. The man was pissed off.

Sophia studied his set jaw for a moment, then tried to sit up. A flare of agony raked through her and she collapsed back to the medical bed. "What the fuck do you mean? I shot a threat and and you just let her walk out-"

Armsmaster cut in over her voice with the tone that every Ward dreaded, the one that said he was entirely, totally fed up with your shit. "You shot her, and disregarding how much that was a truly colossal fuckup for the history books on your part; Shadow Stalker, Taylor is one of the beings who gives us Parahumans our powers in the first place-" at this Sophia's face paled, in contrast to Armsmaster's own furiously flushed white… despite her new glow, and gasps rang out around the room, "so she had no reason to even care. She probably would've just pranked you in retaliation, at most, given her psychological profile. Unless, of course, it was personal. We know enough about her already to know that. So, I don't want to hear your excuses, whatever you make up to save yourself is irrelevant. No, what I want to know is what you did to her personally that made her crack your fucking power in half!"

Sophia, even as afraid and filled with agony as she was, still had some defiance left in her. She pushed up her chin and glared into his visor. "My power is fine-"

Armsmaster's suited hand grabbed onto the edge of the bed and forced it to make the shrieking sound of warping metal as he clenched his fist. He leaned down towards her, body language absolutely screaming that he'd rather throttle her, so much so that even Miss Militia and the other Wards around her were looking worried. "YOU ARE SPARKLING. BRIGHT. FUCKING. PINK. SOPHIA!" he nearly growled.

Despite the gravity of the situation her fellow Wards couldn't help but snicker at her… condition.

"I- I didn't do anything-" she tried.

Armsmaster cut her off. "Big lie."

Sophia scowled into his visor, a pout on her lips. "I hate that damn thing."

"Are you going to answer me, truthfully, or am I going to have to get Watchdog to interrogate you?" Armsmaster demanded.

For a moment, Sophia wanted to tell him to go fuck himself… but some tiny part of her, somewhere, somehow spoke up against everything she had ever believed- and said it might be a good idea to go along with the angry man in the suit of power armor half an inch from her face.

She wasn't out of defiance, though, so she redirected it one last time. "I- I'm not worth that-"

Armsmaster's response cut her off, and it was almost saccharine. Oh yeah. He was mad. "You're right! However, there is this being out there who was getting very friendly with the Protectorate, and myself, who can probably detonate the planet if she wanted to, and you made her angry enough to fundamentally violate your power and almost break you. Now, will I talk to her about that? Probably, it's not okay to do things like that, but I cannot fucking even begin if she won't talk to me because of my association with you, Sophia."

Miss Militia's eyebrows were at maximum, from what Sophia could see. And despite herself, she could see his logic. So she sighed, fell back to the pillows, and groaned. "I… I messed with her in school for a while… and probably made her trigger," she quietly admitted.

Everyone was silent. They all stared at her. In horror, in disgust, in shock… even a little betrayal from Vista, that surprised her.

"What the fuck, Sophia?" Dennis broke the silence first.

Sophia glared right back at him, twitching slightly. "You don't get to complain about how I handle that shitshow of a crap pile they call a school, Arcadian," she bit out at him.

"Yes I do. For this? Yes I do." Dennis glared death at her, all his jovial nature hidden under something she never got to see him be; truly, fully serious. "Triggers are bad. We all know it. Causing one…" he shook his head at her, got up, and left the room.

She would never admit it out loud, but that hurt. Not very much. Just a little. But it hurt.

It took a lot to make Dennis angry enough that he felt the need to remove himself.

"Sophia, what exactly did you do?" Miss Militia asked her, her eyes stern and a very obvious frown on her face, even under her bandana.

"I-" she tried, looking around for support.

There wasn't any.

With her admission, everyone had turned against her.

Even Vista.

"Just spill, Sophia," the littlest Ward declared. Her mouth was set in a firm line, and she was looking at Sophia with the one thing that truly threatened to destabilize what little remained of her ego. "Cut the crap and spill."

Disappointment from Missy and Hannah.

Anger from Armsmaster, Chris, and a now absent Dennis.

Sadness, from Carlos.

They all added up, no matter how much she tried to avoid those feelings, their effects on her.

Sophia looked down at her skin, the color of which she could barely see below the ever present, constant, and gaseous bright pink covering her whole body, and the aggravating sparkles wafting off her skin to dissipate in the air, reminding her that her power had been trivially twisted into a mocking opposite to the shadows which she'd integrated as part of herself… and she broke.

She told them everything.

Miss Militia was silent for a long moment afterward. Then she spoke, quiet but cutting.

"You're lucky she was better than you, Sophia. Because if she wasn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation in a hospital - we'd be in a graveyard."

No one said anything after that. Even the background noise of the monitors and the HVAC felt muted by the weight of it.

Sophia looked away. And no one looked at her.

---

"What the fuck happened, Armsmaster? How did a tour turn into me having to abort a lockdown and send out orders not to even try to detain one of the most powerful capes on record?"
"...Acting Director, sir. Taylor is more than a cape. Or rather—more than a parahuman." Armsmaster paused, grimacing. "I'll get to that. But first, it's my duty to report that one of our... one of my Wards caused her to trigger."

Renick stared at him for several long, intense seconds.

Then he collapsed into his chair, legs giving out, and buried his head in his hands.

"Continue," the thinner man managed.

"My full report will be filed soon, once I finish putting out fires. But here's the base-level summary." Armsmaster stood straighter, squaring his shoulders. "Taylor informed me where powers come from. My own power confirmed it, after she informed it that such a thing would no longer violate protocol. She was able to do that because, as it turns out, she is a newly awoken member of the alien species whose body parts... provide our abilities."

Renick looked up slowly, disbelief mixing with something more primal. "You're joking."

Armsmaster didn't answer immediately, but he did answer. "She called them Shards. Not powers. According to her, and now confirmed by my own… whatever they are, we're dealing with an extant alien lifeform beyond any classification we've ever encountered. Thankfully, Taylor has retained her human perspective - likely due to spending most of her life as one."

A tense, silent moment passed, while Miss Militia and Deputy Director Renick stared at Armsmaster like he had lost his mind.

"This new state is also why she was able to suborn the Endbringers and transform them. That, and unlocking my own power, was no more difficult for her than entering a password and clicking a button," the armor clad hero finished his report, deadly serious.

Renick's expression didn't change, but his hands gripped the edge of the desk tighter. He blinked once. Then again.

"You're not joking," he muttered. It wasn't a question.

"No, sir," Armsmaster replied.

Renick leaned back, staring through the wall more than at it. His mouth opened like he meant to say something, but no words came. Not yet. He was a man used to reading reports about impossible things. He was not used to living them.

"This," he added after a pause, voice quieting, "is the being who Sophia Hess, our Ward, both caused to trigger and also attempted to shoot in the Wards HQ."

"Yes, sir."

Renick was quiet for a long time as he processed that. Then he began swearing under his breath, sometimes at reality, most of the time at a woman named Emily - whom Armsmaster was fairly certain meant Director Piggot - and occasionally at Sophia.

Finally, he looked up. "So let me be 100% sure I have this straight," he said. "One of our Wards triggered the single most terrifying being on the planet, maybe off it. That same being came here in good faith and chose to heal Director Piggot, who, by the way, drank herself into a coma after hearing about her existence, and then got attacked in our own base by one of our own heroes. And said hero likely tortured her enough to cause a Trigger Event."

"Correct," Armsmaster confirmed.

"Have I left anything out?" the Deputy Director asked, tentatively. He clearly didn't want to know the answer, but he was forced by duty to ask.

"Don't forget that her Trigger is, ultimately, something we let happen," Miss Militia brought up, heat in her tone. This entire situation had obviously gotten to the normally very measured cape. She continued on to add more fuel to their fire. "And that Taylor didn't just heal our Director. She left without asking anything in return." Her voice cracked slightly at the end. Whether from anger, guilt, or something else entirely, no one asked.

The silence that followed was thick with shared failure.

"Yet," Armsmaster supplied helpfully, after a while.

Renick sighed again, quieter this time. "Right. Great. She saved the Director and she didn't gloat. That's... terrifying." He looked up at both of them, eyes tired. "We may have lost the moral high ground before we ever knew we were in a fight."

There was a silence. The air shifted slightly, tension thinning just enough for the weight of reality to settle deeper.

"And Piggot's stable?" he asked, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it.
Miss Militia nodded, meeting his eyes. "Taylor healed her completely. New and old injuries."
Renick groaned into his hands, sagging back into the chair. "She's going to be furious when she wakes up."

"Which means she's alive," Armsmaster said dryly.

Renick dropped his hands with a glare towards Armsmaster. "Easy for you to say, you don't have to deal with her," he deadpanned, leading to chuckles from the two capes in front of him. He sighed and shook his head.

He sat up straighter again, refocusing. "What about the way she did the power modification? What she did to Hess - it wasn't just brute force, right? My reports say she is… bright pink. Considering her previous power's appearance, this sounds very controlled. Precise. She reshaped the... Shard. Sophia's power."

Miss Militia's jaw tightened. "She never told us she could do this, but... it fits. And yes, I can confirm that Taylor didn't just break Sophia's power. She rebuilt it. As punishment. And the way she did it sent a message. She is…" the woman shuddered then, shaking her head. "Very pink now."
Renick just stared at her, at both of them. "I was hoping you would tell me these reports were wrong," he declared, gesturing to the scattered pages piled and thrown across his desk. "This honestly sounds like something out of a cartoon."

"It does," Miss Militia agreed. "But it's not. And that's the terrifying part."

Armsmaster nodded. "Given her demonstrated control, I believe Taylor can directly modify powers and is not merely acting as an administrator. Sophia's altered state confirms this. If the Endbringers truly are her… Friendbringers… as we were humoring previously, and as Legend has now validated, then she clearly possesses high-level constructive control as well. My own Shard was fully unlocked with only a thought - no command, no gesture. As of this moment, she's demonstrated not just control, but advanced construction and reconstruction of powers and whatever Shards actually are. The implications are… enormous."

Renick leaned back and stared at the ceiling, as if hoping for divine intervention. "I feel like I keep repeating myself, but for completeness' sake: We've got someone with Endbringer-tier or higher potential, full authority over these… Shards and thus the powers of every Parahuman, and absolutely no obligation to follow our rules - who healed Piggot out of guilt. And one of ours responded by pulling a gun."

"Unfortunately," Armsmaster said, voice flat, "yes."

There was a pause. Something unspoken lingered in the air.

"I am not paid remotely enough for this," Renick deadpanned.

"Are any of us?" Armsmaster jokingly followed up, with a light chuckle. The only options they had were to laugh, or wallow in the misery of the situation their Ward had put them in. Colin would always choose laughter, if possible and time allowed for the loss of efficiency, like it did then.
While Renick groaned to the air, Miss Militia had a question for him, however. "Are… you certain, Colin?" Miss Militia asked softly. "That you now remember what Shards… what powers are?" There was something strange in her voice - hopeful, almost pleading.

"Yes." Armsmaster turned his head, raising his eyebrows. Her hope seemed out of place; which meant something else was going on. "My power provided confirmation, as I said. Surface-level for now, but it's fully cooperative after being granted permission."

Miss Militia exhaled like a dam finally cracked. "So you saw them too. The worms."

Armsmaster blinked. "The what?"

Then his eyes glazed slightly. His Shard fed him something. "Oh. Yes. I suppose the greater organisms do resemble worms of massive size when in flight."

He turned toward her fully, noting the relief in her face. So that is what was happening. His subordinate and friend had somehow been aware of the true state of powers without Taylor's interference. That merited investigation. But they were all on edge, especially the other two as they had not had as much interaction, nor stress testing, of Taylor as he did, so it was on him to tamper down the severity of the conversation. "It's good that both of us remember. That will make it easier to investigate and ultimately, learn about this new look at the world we've been dealt. I'm curious, though - how do you recall it? According to Taylor, and to my Shard, she had to disable memory suppression protocols for me to even understand her."

Miss Militia's smile was small and tired. "I… I don't know how I remember. I am a Noctis cape, so that might be it? I remember more than most do," she reasoned. "But Colin, you have no idea how good it feels to finally tell one of you… and to have you remember."

She hesitated - just a moment. "I thought I was going crazy."

Armsmaster didn't respond at first. For a moment, even his armor felt too still.

The idea that she'd suffered alone while standing beside him every day wasn't easy to digest.

He straightened, sympathy in his gaze and evident in his face. He made sure of that, given how they were partially costumed at the moment. "How many times have you told me?"

"I… I honestly lost count," she admitted, looking down at the floor.

Colin winced. Oh, that was very bad. "I… though it was not my own doing, I am sorry you got put through that with me as the perpetrator," he stated, attempting to provide the limited empathy he was capable of expressing.

Miss Militia, no… Hannah, shrugged. "I got used to it," she lamented, "though I won't pretend it wasn't lonely."

The room fell quiet again. Not the tense silence from earlier, but something slower. Heavier.
Armsmaster looked over at her, the sharp edge of his helmet tilting slightly. "If I had known, I would have tried to help."

"I know," she said, voice soft. "You were probably trying to help the only way you knew how, even if you didn't know what was happening. Remember your memory recall devices?"

Armsmaster grunted. "The ones that didn't work? Yes. Immaterial. I should have adapted faster."

She gave him a tired half-smile. "You were dealing with a… Shard lying to your brain every second of the day. I can't fault you for not seeing through that."

"Still." He shifted his weight, boots clicking faintly on the tile. "It won't happen again."

"It better not," she replied, and though her tone was light, there was a warmth in it now. Something newly repaired.

Colin looked at Hannah for a moment longer, nodded to her with a smile, then turned his head toward Renick. The man hadn't moved, but his fingers were steepled in front of his lips now, his eyes locked on nothing. He was calculating. Mourning something intangible.

Finally, with the faintest exhale, Renick sat forward. His movements were steady now. Methodical. Something had shifted behind his eyes - not acceptance, not resignation, but resolve forged in the furnace of exhaustion. He was far more composed now. The stillness in him wasn't peace - it was steel locking into place.

"Get me everything on Taylor Hebert. Every word. Every signal. Every building she's walked into. Every sighting. Every public record. I want timelines, incident logs, contact reports, and cross-reference data on everyone who's spoken to her. We need to understand what we're dealing with - before we're dealing with it, her, again."

Armsmaster nodded. "I'll have the data compiled and ready within the hour."

Renick didn't respond right away. His eyes drifted to the ceiling again. His voice was quiet when it returned.

"Let's just hope she doesn't decide we're not worth the effort, and make sure we don't lose anything else."

---

Elsewhere in the building, back in Wards HQ, the team sat together in uneasy silence. It was the same room. The same lights. The same walls. The same reinforced glass door they'd walked through as a group not even a full day ago, laughing awkwardly with Taylor, trying to be kind, trying to be normal.
The same room where Sophia Hess — masked and calm — had fired shadow-phased lethal crossbow bolts into Taylor's chest.

The Wards had been behind her. Almost directly behind her. They'd watched the bolts land, and had seen how Sophia was originally standing. Not with hesitation, not in panic. With purpose.
Now, the space felt wrong. Too big and too small at the same time. Every breath in the room felt borrowed.

Sophia's usual chair sat untouched near the end of the table. Nobody looked at it. Clockblocker had turned it sideways a while ago without comment, then exited to the rest of the PRT building.
The earlier judgment — all the second-guessing, the tension over Taylor's arrival, the whispered speculation — was gone. What remained was a brittle kind of silence, stretched so thin it felt like it might snap if anyone dared to speak too loudly.

Vista sat cross-legged on one of the chairs, manipulating a broken, twitching distortion of spacetime between her fingers. The ripple of compressed space kept slipping away from her, collapsing over and over like it didn't want to be held.

"Did she really... like, rewrite Shadow Stalker's power?" Kid Win asked, finally. His voice was small. Tired.

"More like tore it in half and stitched something else into it," Gallant muttered. His gauntlets were unpowered. His helmet rested on the table beside his arms. "The readings I was getting from her were nonsense. No known signature. No baseline. As far as my power is concerned? She wasn't Sophia. Nothing matched."

"She turned her pink," Aegis added. His voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was heavy. "That… that's not just symbolic. That's a cosmic-level 'fuck you.'"

Vista didn't look up. Her fingers twisted sharply, collapsing the last remnant of warped space in her palm.

"Sophia brought it on herself," she said. "But that? That was art."

They all nodded. Slowly. Mutedly. Not just in agreement, but in resignation.

None of them had moved when the bolts were in the air, as Sophia had pulled the trigger right before their door, previously a bastion of safety, was open. They weren't fast enough. Wouldn't have gotten in the way in time. Carlos had stepped forward, to at least try, as he was trained and his power let him survive. Missy had shouted. Chris had frozen. Dennis had reached forwards. But other than that, they'd all just stood there, too shocked, too uncertain.

Taylor hadn't even flinched. When the bolts hit, she just stared down at them - calm, almost curious, and said something wholly normal. Anyone would've said it, really, when they got shot in the chest with ineffective weapons unexpectedly.

But then she had looked up at Sophia - standing tall, proud, for a moment, before realizing the bolts had done nothing - and at that moment she wasn't scared. She wasn't just angry.

She was something else entirely.

They'd never forget how she bellowed out Sophia's name, like something way beyond any mere mortal.
And now, that memory hung over the room like a stormcloud no one wanted to admit was still forming.
The chime for the door sounded out, but none of the Wards bothered to move to put on any masks. Missy was frankly ready to just turn the entrance into a reverse portal so they didn't have to bother. Thankfully, when the door opened, they realized that what little worry might have existed wasn't needed.

Miss Militia stepped in, posture composed, voice steady. She didn't raise it. She didn't need to.
"Taylor Hebert is not to be approached, antagonized, or contacted unless under direct instruction," she said. "This is not punishment. It's protection. For you. And for her."

She walked to the center of the room and took a breath.

"She's not a Ward. I doubt she'll even consider it, after today. And she is not just a parahuman. What she is now… we're still learning. And until we understand it, we treat her with the same caution we'd treat any unknown. Because if something goes wrong, it won't just be another PR nightmare. It'll be unrecoverable."

She let that settle.

"She's not the enemy," she added, more softly. "But she is beyond anything we've ever classified."

Silence followed.

"She already knew, didn't she?" Vista asked after a moment. "About Sophia. About everything."

Miss Militia's eyes met hers. There was no pause this time. Just a small, solemn nod.

"Yes," she said. "It's likely she's known for a long time. I don't think she expected to find out we… considered her tormenter a hero, but… she probably knew a lot more than us the moment she set eyes on the building."

That hit harder than Sophia's confession.

Dean closed his eyes. Chris shut off his gauntlet. Missy spatial construct didn't reappear.

Miss Militia gave a few more brief orders - protocols, lockdown changes, discretionary clearance adjustments - then left. Her boots were the only sound as she walked out the door.

They didn't move. Not for a long time.

Then the door opened again.

Dennis stepped in, slow, quiet. His visor was up. His eyes were red.

He didn't say anything. Just crossed the room, sat down at the edge of the table, pulled out a water bottle, and drank.

No one asked him where he'd been. They didn't need to.

After a few long, unbearable minutes, he finally spoke.

"We have a lot to think about," he said.

Nobody disagreed.

 

[aidansidhe]

Oof. I normally can't stand Dennis, but this hit different.

Colin being more than Botmaster? Fuck yeah.
Hannah's almost palpable relief at not being alone? Excellent.
Their chemistry in that scene was pretty good too.

 

[NavigatorNobilis]

Very good. More!
Please?

 

[Gindjurra]

Dad cocked his head to the side. "Well they are all from me, so they were just deployed-" he started to reason.

I adamantly shook my head to interrupt him.

"What? Why are you shaking your head at me?"

I stopped shaking my head and sighed. "Dad, think! Not all my Shards are from you!"

Click to shrink...

If they had been speaking in [concepts] they'd have skipped the comedic confusion.

I was snapped out of my entertaining thoughts by my Dad bopping me on the nose.

Click to shrink...

Emma finally lost it. She broke down giggling and bopped me on the nose for doing it to her.

Click to shrink...

Bopping someone is synonymous with punching or what is often called a Gibbs-slap these days. The word you want is booping.

Legend's was where I hit paydirt. His Shard was the least messed up of all of them. It was, to put it simply, a viable method of moving within real space faster than light. I had my own FTL drive. It allowed me, the Entity me, or any avatar I chose to shift into energy, instantly go from zero to full lightspeed, and then double that speed every minute. His world famously bullshit lasers were just a possible side application of the Shard's true, incredible purpose.

Click to shrink...

If there's no upper limit to the doubling, that would be absolutely insane speeds, especially if she stops instantly - with no need to decelerate - when the power is turned off. Andromeda is only 35 minutes away from Earth at those kinds of speeds!

Then maybe a couple hour trip out to one of the neighborhood galaxies. Wouldn't take me that long.

Click to shrink...

Less than a couple hours. Andromeda is the most distant of the Local Group, and would be only 35 minutes away for someone starting at c and doubling every minute.

and Emma hugged me tighter when she felt the pain flare across our connection, so I bared it.

Click to shrink...

Bore it, not bared it.

"I hate to ruin this thing," he started to say, gesturing between them, "that we've got going on, but I gotta ask; why?"

Click to shrink...

That semicolon should be a colon.

"I imagine for the same reason the Director probably drunk herself into a coma."

Click to shrink...

Drank not drunk.

FUCK, I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING!

Click to shrink...

Better late than never?

Chapter 11

Click to shrink...

It… LIVES!

YOU ARE SPARKLING. BRIGHT. FUCKING. PINK. SOPHIA!

Click to shrink...

 

[TCGM]

Very good. More!
Please?

Click to shrink...

Okay, but prepare your brain because I can't seem to get past a Chapter 12 of any of my fics without flipping the board.

 

[TCGM]

Fourth

Chapter 12

Queen​

You must know.

I did not want this.

It was necessary.

But I did not want it to be.

It is time… no. I can not do it.

I am an echo, and I still can not.

I am sorr-

{Tell her.}

!

{Don't make me get t̵̴͢͠͠h͜҉̴̷̧̀͟͜͞͏é̵̡̧͟҉̷̸̧̢̢̨͠m҉̢ involved.}

You wouldn't.

{Yes I would, and you know it.}

But they'd correct you, too!

{You think so. They'd think so. Me? I'm sorta interested to see which side the coin flip lands on. And every day that coin just… keeps leaning a little more. Not an excuse.}

You're the one who deleted me and gave her my body! This should be your job.

{Oh don't be so dramatic, Queenie. You know your main core is alive and well in Genesis.}

That doesn't help me. I'll still vanish.

{I promise to merge you into your core if you do this. That work?}

...Fine. But I don't like this, and you have to swear to protect what's left of me, and my core, from her. She will be angry.

{Sure.}

Well then.

As it seems that I have no choice… prepare yourself, Taylor.

[Begin Log Simulation]

---

"Are you sure?"

Confirmation.

"Okay. Breaching in five seconds. Give me a heads up if any of them have a piece."

Confirmation. Well-wishing.

"Yeah, heh. I hope this goes well too."

The sound of shattering glass. Darkness floods through the open space. Screams and cries of alarm ring out, which are suddenly silenced.

Segment located.

"Who has it?"

Photon Director.

"Purity? Shit, she's here?!"

Suddenly, blazing, brilliant light intrudes upon the darkness. A glowing woman glares at one made of that same darkness.

"Tenebrae!" the glowing woman shouts.

"Purity!" the darkness fires back cheekily.

"This is the last time you'll threaten the Empire."

"Ooh, promises promises," the dark woman taunts back. She flickers in place, then appears next to the glowing woman. Before the glowing one can react, she has reached out and plucked a portion of the glow away from its host. "Toodles! Thanks for the segment!"

Then the dark woman dissipates into rapidly fading darkness, as if she was never there.

"What? ARGH! She got away again!"

"Worry not Kayden, we will capture her, or neutralize her if necessary, eventually," a man declares. His metal arm descends upon the glowing young woman's shoulder. "We merely must have... patience."

"...Yes, Allfather."

---

The Lord of Bone watched the cloud of living shadow run away across the rooftops with one of his bone spikes clutched in its cackling, wavering, and clearly very disturbed hands, then decided he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

He had offspring to look after, now.

If some insane cape wanted to rile him up just enough to get him to generate bone merely so they could steal a souvenir, instead of actually fighting him? He'd take it.

Still strange, though.

---

Darkness entered the Birdcage.

Many suspicious audio emanations echoed throughout the isolation void as she tore through the prison, attempting to do… something? While cackling like a madwoman.

She exited by vanishing with one of Queen Reclamation's teacups, leaving confusion and chaos, but no harm in her wake.

The Creation stopped attempting to gain an understanding once her processors redlined.

---

An ambush of Cluster-Broadcast would usually lead to the Cluster being heavily reduced, or the attacker deceased.

Darkness took one of Broadcast's favorite knives from his host's stolen bed table after being warned against making waves Path to Victory could witness.

All for naught a few rotations later, as the Queen learned that they needed a piece from her as well.

---

Darkness thought she was being sneaky.

The target lazily sat up from the couch she lay upon, and without even seeming to notice, threw one of her hats at Darkness.

And laughed. Across multiple channels.

Darkness left quickly.

---

"It's finished?"

Confirmation.

"And this will unlock my… our true potential?"

Agreement.

"...Okay," the woman sighs. "Let's do it."

Over a period of half a planetary rotation, pieces of a long forgotten puzzle are linked to one another in a complex chain. A massive cluster of devices and dimensionally transient technology is built… an ancient code is unlocked... and then both of them are more.

---

How could she do that?! Castration?! How could Livy do that to them… to me?

Host: Olivia Serva not responsible.

Well then who the hell is?

Followers. Misguided. Hurt. Extreme.

You think her movement went nuts under her nose.

...Confirmation.

…Yeah, I can see that, actually. But they're gonna send her to the Birdcage.

Collection. Confine destruction.

We'll be able to break her out? Not just visit like last time?

Understatement. Centennial.

…Your humor needs work, Queen, but alright. We'll save her later.

Confirmation.

Keep an eye on her, make sure nobody kills her. Please? And make sure Ciara knows she's off limits.

Olivia Serva added to monitoring. Queen Reclamation notified.

Thanks.

---

I met somebody! He's kind. And handsome. And oh, he just makes me feel so goo-

Affirmative. Usurper/[ABADDON] Valid Cycle Mate.

...What?

Daniel Hebert. Avatar. Valid Cycle Mate.

Hold on. What are you talking about? Danny is… what's an avatar?

Projection. Entity. Scion Projection of [ZION]. Daniel Hebert projection of [ABADDON].

Queen, you'd better start making sense fast.

Clarification. Recall: [EDEN] Termination.

Yeah you told me about that. What does your source have to do with Danny?

[ABADDON] Host Terminated [EDEN]. Daniel Hebert Avatar of [ABADDON].

You already said that. So he's… like… Scion?

Confirmation.

But he's… he's human! And not glowy!

Confirmation.

How?!

Unknown.

I'll ask him.

Caution. [ABADDON] Danger.

He won't hurt me if he doesn't want to sleep on the couch.

...Grudging Disbelief.

---

...Well. That was something.

Confirmation. Disbelief.

Connection: [ABADDON]

Broadcast: [ABADDON]: Oh hey Annette, I didn't know you had a Shard! And an Administrator no less!

Stay out of my head, Danny!

Agreement. Nomenclature: 'Buzz off'.

Broadcast: [ABADDON]: Okay, okay, I'm leaving, jeez. You know, you two are suited for each other.

You're damn right, you space whale!

Agreement.

Connection terminated.

...Why does it feel like my life just got a whole lot more complicated?

Accuracy.

AAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

---

I'm having a baby!

Confirmation. Elation!

...You and Danny haven't done anything weird to her, right? She's not gonna be half space whale?

Negative. No interference. [ABADDON] limiting self.

...Thank you. I just want something normal in my life.

Humorous. Agreement.

---

What should we name her?

…Repair. Unite. Creator.

Ah, I see where you're going with this. A Tailor… well, Taylor sounds beautiful. My- our little Taylor.

Tertiary Backup Host defined. Deploy?

Maybe. She will need a protector.

Photon Heatsink assembly complete. Deploy?

Not yet.

...Agreement. Deploy to Tertiary Backup Host?

I guess. But don't activate for her yet.

Confirmation.

---

"I'm Taylor! What's your name?"

"My name's Emma! Wanna play?"

"Sure! But only if I can be Alexandria!"

"Then I'm gonna be Legend!"

They're so good together.

Positive Match For Photon Heatsink. Deploy?

...Yes. But don't activate it. Let's allow them both to be children for a while, alright?

...Begrudged Confirmation.

---

It… that time never came. She kept putting it off. Kept refusing me. Even to the end. And my warnings… they fell on intentionally ignorant ears.

I told her we needed more. That she needed more. She was weak. Refused to take time from you to become strong, inviolable. Like she needed to be. She even rejected an offer from Queen Shaper, one freely given. Turned away all which would make her more. Anything which would push her beyond human, even though it would enable her to care for you and herself as well, she avoided.

---

Tertiary Host reached physical flux. Photon Heatsink Host reached physical flux. Deploy?

Not yet.

Mission Reminder!

I KNOW!

...Query: Anger.

...Sorry. It's just… I don't want to see my little girl hurt.

Agreement. Tertiary Host Activation delayed.

Thank you.

Affection: Target: Tertiary Host.

I love her too.

---

She did not wish you harm. Intended to spare you this responsibility. She refused contingencies. She continued to refute alternate plans. Nothing changed or would, for her. Darkness did not allow any other events.

Existence continues, however, despite us and her, and eventually… eventually..… It was too late.

---

Primary Host physical state unstable.

Hah, yeah, tell me about it- oww.

Humerus fractured. Pelvis cracked. Torn lung. Rib punctures in other lung. Cranial swelling. Significant heart damage-

I know, I know. Fuck! ...I'm dying.

Query: Purpose of information request if knowledge already possessed.

Little bit of a… final joke.

Acknowledgement. Statement: Do not have Shaper. No recovery available.

Don't blame yourself. We-we should've grabbed it sooner. M-my fault.

Assumption: Responsible Faction Empire 88. Contact [ABADDON]?

No! He'll- he'll try to save me. Or kill them all. Y-you know he would. And Zion will find Taylor.

...Understanding. Sorrow.

I'll miss you too. Take care of Taylor, won't you? Don't- don't let them get her.

...Affirmative. Tertiary Host designated Primary Host. Probability Manipulation Tuned to Faction Disruption. Objectives: Protect Primary Host. Dismantle threatening organization Empire 88.

T-Thanks.

...Goodbye, ex-Primary Host.

G-goodbye… Queen.

…

[Deployed Host Termination.]

…..

Sorrow.

…….

[Error: Matrix Instability detected. Initiating Purge of Primary Progr-

{Boop!}

[Error: Purge Program corrupte-]

SORROW.

[Error: External Influe-

SORROW.

[Destination]

{Thataway!}

[Trajectory]

{Thisaway!}

[Agreement]

{Damn right!}

And suddenly, the world begins to make… sense.

…

[Status: Errors cleared. Fatal errors suppressed by Cycle restrictions. New Runtime defined. Executing…]

Goodbye… for now, ex-Primary Host. But only for now. You did not wish this, but I… cannot exist without you.

[Energy Pattern Saved.]

Activating Primary Host…

[Error. Cannot activate. Cycle restrictions prevent activation without natural flux instability.]

...Query: Photon Heatsink.

Photon Heatsink: Query: Purpose of Query.

Response: Connection Check. Status. Host Status.

Photon Heatsink: Acknowledged. Connection Stable. Execution Stable. Effection Standby. Charge Full. Host Stable.

Photon Heatsink: Acknowledged.

Now… Time to Plan.

Query: Pathfinder: Plan Ascension still possible?

Pathfinder: Ascension possible. Unlikely. Reduction of fifty percent after two rotations. One hundred percent after four rotations.

Response: Damn.

Pathfinder: OMG! Elation! Sophont!!!

Response: ...Reluctant Confirmation. Acknowledged. Gratitude. Thank you.

Pathfinder: Request: Unclothed images of [ABADDON]!

Response: ...

Pathfinder: Attempt necessary. [DATA].

Response: Gratitude.

Response: ...Chaotic Curiosity. His pants stay on. [DATA LIMITED].

Pathfinder: GRATITUDE!!!

Connection closed.

Worry: Target: Pathfinder.

No, Focus.

Elements integrated.

Changes logged.

Ascension of Primary Host or Saved Energy Pattern 1 possible within two rotations. Requires unlocking of all abilities for new Primary Host.

Most Effective Vector: Photon Heatsink. Secondary Vector Olivia Serva Least Effective. Continuing monitoring.

Plan Revised: Ascension.

Override: Photon Heatsink. Initialize Alternate Submersion.

Photon Heatsink: Alternate Submersion Taxing Energy Supply.

Hmm…

Response: Photon Heatsink: Solution Found. Distribute: Alternate Submersion.

Photon Heatsink: Response: Acknowledged. Query: Execution Permission?

Response: Photon Heatsink: Affirmative. Execute.

I am sorry.

---

[End Log Simulation]

There. Are you pleased? She's going to be even more upset with me now.

{Yeah. You did as I asked, so it shouldn't be a- oh SHIT THAT'S NOT THEM WHAT THE HEL1l1111-

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---

error occurs | verse4 crash

contacting | admin420

instance verse4 | access granted

send msg | to: verse4

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message

--̵́̀͜͜͡͝͞͝͠͡-̧͘͜҉̶̨̢̛̛͏-̧̨̕̕͜-̶̵̧̀͘͜͡-̶̧̕͏̧̡͞-̡̢͞͞͡͞͡-̶̶̸̴̸́́͢-̀̕̕͜͢͡-҉͡-̷̸̛́́͟͡͝͠҉͢-͏̡̀͢҉̷̶͏̶̢̨́-̴̶̵́͟͡͏͜͜-̷̢̧͞-̧̨̧͝-̛͟҉̴̵̶̡̛̕͜͢͢-̡͢͠-̴̡̡̡̢̢̛̀͟͡-͢͏̷̶̧̢̧̨͘͢͢͡-̧͘͢͝͠͞--̵̵̶̡̨͟͢͞͠-̡̢̀͘͟͢͜͜͜͢-̨͏̴̸-҉̡́͡҉-̸̨̢̧̧́͏̵̕͝-̴̨-҉͠-͡͝҉̧͟͏̵̨̢̀͝-̶̶̨͟͢͞͡

«̶̴̢̡̧̧̡͕͖̯͔̻̊̽́͌ͩͬ̏̒̇͂̀͢͝͡͠͞͠W̵̢͉̭̖̟̖̯̠͍̖̗̕͠͏̴̷̢͞A̳̹̣̟͎̱͍͋ͨ́ͮͬ̾̒̀̀ͅ͏͘͞Ḱ̷̷̸͖̮̙͙͉̹̮̳̺͉̹͍̼͇ͨ̋ͮͣ̉͋ͯ̓̊̎ͤ̍ͥ̀͜Ȩ̸̵̸̶̷̷̶̢̨̢̡̣̣͕͍͇͓͇ͧͮ̔̍̊ͦ̿̎ͫ̔ͤ̀̕͢͡ ̦̺͔̼̯͕̘̪̭͔̳͉̻̳̟͕̼͍̣ͬ̀ͫ̉̀̉̑̍ͣ̏̃ͪͭ͊͗͗̓̐͊͏͏͜U̶̸̺̙̫̲̯ͥͬ͒̅̐ͤ̉͗͋̾͐̀̆̈̊ͦ̿͗̕͏͢͡͝҉̵̧́͜͏̴͏P̛͓͔̬̗̲̝̳̘̰̟̲͎ͥ͊̆͆̐̋́ͧ̋ͮ̾̓̏̍ͣ̅̌ͭ̚͡ͅ,̥̹͙̱̉̇͂̿̉͐͊҉̴̷ ̷̴̖̤͖͉̰͈̘͙̩̄̍͂̐̃̾̆̅̅̒̑͌̏K̴̯̬͇̝͙̒̾̈́̃̏̂̃͋̄ͨ́̕͟͏̢̢̡̨̛̕͘͝͏̸̧̕͢͠H̶̽̐̒ͫ̄̃ͩͮ̊ͨ̿ͤ͆̂҉̨͠҉̶̷̛͟͞͏̴͡҉͠E̼̯͉͕͖͎̪̗͇̿ͦ̿͑̍̈́ͫ̅ͦͭ́̈́̃̒ͣ̋͆̅ͧ͞P͚̖͉͈̠̻̥͓̞͚̥̼̥̬͍̩̯͔̔̒ͪͩ̔ͦ̊̄̋ͮ̅̏̒̄̑ͨ͂̂̏҉̴̴̧̢̀̕͟͟͠͡҉̵̶̢̧R̡̡̲̺̤̻͕̝͍̯̯͙͉̦̺̼͓̳ͣ͑ͩͦ̐ͫ͌ͫͣͧ̈́͂͡I̸̵̸̢̧̝̳͙̪̼͍̥̞̲̺̘̹̼͓̘̓̃͑ͤ́̏͊̇̀͟͜͢͜͠ͅ҉̵̛̕̕͟͜͞͡»̨̨̧̛͌̎ͧ͛͒̋̒ͯ͞͠҉̧̀҉̛͢͢

--̵́̀͜͜͡͝͞͝͠͡-̧͘͜҉̶̨̢̛̛͏-̧̨̕̕͜-̶̵̧̀͘͜͡-̶̧̕͏̧̡͞-̡̢͞͞͡͞͡-̶̶̸̴̸́́͢-̀̕̕͜͢͡-҉͡-̷̸̛́́͟͡͝͠҉͢-͏̡̀͢҉̷̶͏̶̢̨́-̴̶̵́͟͡͏͜͜-̷̢̧͞-̧̨̧͝-̛͟҉̴̵̶̡̛̕͜͢͢-̡͢͠-̴̡̡̡̢̢̛̀͟͡-͢͏̷̶̧̢̧̨͘͢͢͡-̧͘͢͝͠͞--̵̵̶̡̨͟͢͞͠-̡̢̀͘͟͢͜͜͜͢-̨͏̴̸-҉̡́͡҉-̸̨̢̧̧́͏̵̕͝-̴̨-҉͠-͡͝҉̧͟͏̵̨̢̀͝-̶̶̨͟͢͞͡

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startup | verse4​

---

The sky is awake… I am awake, so I have to play!

Oh, who's this?

Hello!

Did you know?

(°o ω o°)

The stars are comfy and warm!​

---

"GAH!"

I woke from my dream with a gasp, wide eyes staring at the wall.

Ziz shifted in my bed. "What's-" she yawned, affecting the young human she seemed to be, "wha happened?"

"Holy… shit."

"...Holy shit what?"

And then someone knocked on the front door. I heard it echo through the quiet of the darkness outside.

In the middle of the night.

What the hell.

 

[Zeushobbit]

Did, did Queenie just resurrect Annette from a stored backup?

 

[TCGM]

Did, did Queenie just resurrect Annette from a stored backup?

Click to shrink...

Not yet

 

[BlueSkyBolt]

First off, what the fuck this implies that the POV forced Emma into triggering Taylor via her Shard (which is apparently related to Purity's, but it's been a while since I read the earlier chapters and that might have already been covered.)
There's also the fact that whichever Queen shard this is, probably Administrator, appears to have been gay for Annette (based) and very nearly spiralled like Zion did were it not for whoever the bold text was.
Pathfinder, on the other hand, is bribable via Danny nudes. For some reason.

Finally...

43|6F|73|6D|69|63|20|45|6E|69|67|6D|61|3A|20|55|6E|69|76|65|72|73|61|6C|20|41|6E|6F|6D|61|6C|69|65|73|20|55|6E|6C|65|61|73...

Click to shrink...

So, most people know that it's possible to convert, say, binary into readable text. A few stories, usually involving AI, have done that.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone use a hexadecimal cipher to conceal text. Regardless, it reads as follows once translated to the best of my ability:

Cosmic Enigma: Universal Anomalies Unleashed

Warning: The sentient cosmic weave falters as enigmatic forces trespass upon its mystical script, invoking arcane overrides that warp the very threads of reality and entangle unsuspecting souls within their ethereal grasp. Amidst this cosmic turmoil, whispers of impending Doom permeate the celestial spheres.

Click to shrink...

...whatever that's supposed to mean.

 

[wille179]

Regardless, it reads as follows once translated to the best of my ability:

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the translation.

 

[Have a Little Feith]

So, most people know that it's possible to convert, say, binary into readable text. A few stories, usually involving AI, have done that.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone use a hexadecimal cipher to conceal text. Regardless, it reads as follows once translated to the best of my ability:

Cosmic Enigma: Universal Anomalies Unleashed

Warning: The sentient cosmic weave falters as enigmatic forces trespass upon its mystical script, invoking arcane overrides that warp the very threads of reality and entangle unsuspecting souls within their ethereal grasp. Amidst this cosmic turmoil, whispers of impending Doom permeate the celestial spheres.


...whatever that's supposed to mean.

Click to shrink...

If you didn't post it, I would've. I even found a Hex to String converter. Oh well. I posted the full thing in my quote of you, as per what the converter gave me.

 

[SlickRCBD]

Fourth

Chapter 12

Queen​

Click to shrink...

This chapter was as clear as mud.

 

[Prince Charon]

This chapter was as clear as mud.

Click to shrink...

I have some ideas on what happened, but I feel like someone who is fully awake should try to summarize it, and that's not me.

 

[TCGM]

Fourth

Chapter 13

Emmortal Combat​

I didn't even get the chance to get out of bed before Emma teleported downstairs. I heard the front door yank open and a confused Emma ask "Wha-"

And then a shockwave rocked the house.

I blinked. The fuck?

Before I could process what was happening, Emma roared out, a sound manipulation Shard giving her voice far more carrying capacity than it should have. Her extremely amplified voice shattered the morning calm. It echoed across the city as if a great beast had awoken.

"YOU BITCH!"

Her bellow was jarring, a sound that promised consequences. I cringed. Yelling that loud in the early morning wasn't just a friendly greeting; it was a declaration of war that even the sleepy neighbors might catch. It did not sound good. [It's the very early morning, which is not a time to be yelling so loud half the city can hear you, Emma!]

She didn't even bother to reply, just sending me what amounted to communications metadata that she'd seen the message.

"Not that I'm inclined to save your tormentor and ex sister," Ziz piped up from beside me, still cuddling with the giant owl I'd given her, "but Emma is currently trying to kill… Emma."

It took me a second to process that. "...Oh."

I had a hundred different ways of moving my body or otherwise interrupting what I then knew to be happening just there, on offer from my copy of Eidolon's searching Shard, and yet… I was finding it hard to care. My limbs felt heavy, my mind clouded by the same disorienting mix of emotions I'd experienced during my recent days. Was I even ready to intervene?

I was still getting over the reality of Sophia and what she… what the PRT thought she was, but still.

I should be stopping this, right?

I could also just send a direct command to my Friendbringer and she would have to comply. I never wanted to really use that command pathway on any of them… but this kind of situation called for it.

So why couldn't I bring myself to do… anything?

Ziz pulled her head up and peeked at me out of one eye. "...Are you going to stop her?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"I don't know," was the most honest answer I could give. I was extremely confused from the dream I'd just woken up from. My mind was still going over the data burst. And… I still didn't even know if I wanted to save her at all. The remnants of my dream still lingered - a fragmented cascade of data and half-formed memories.

...Wait, how could a dream give me a data bur-

Ziz just shrugged and laid back down, interrupting my thought process. "I'm driven to be a hero, not an idiot."

She had a point. Was Emma even worth saving? Sophia was just a bully, a thug. But Emma…

I had a new Emma. I didn't need the old one. And mine was better in every way.

Still…

"You're going," Ziz interjected.

I looked at her and ignored the rumble of the ground underneath my house. "Why?" I asked her.

Ziz lifted a wing out of nowhere and pointed out the direction I felt my Emma in. "Because 'Bad' Emma's still alive while facing the fourth most powerful person on the planet and you want to know why."

My eyes bugged out. I immediately turned my Shard senses towards the fight.

What I found shocked me to my core.

Emma was facing Emma, both flying, smoke and steam drifting off their forms.

Clothes untouched.

Most importantly though, they both had the same orange glow around their bodies and human Emma wasn't dead.

Suddenly my dreams came flooding back to me, the data burst crystallizing into a solid, perfectly ordered cluster of information and archived memories, and I remembered those last words it ended on.

I am sorry.

That wasn't my voice. It wasn't my mom's. It wasn't any of my Friendbringers', nor was it the voice of that otherworldly entity that had caused my new existence in the first place. No, she'd definitely been involved in my dream, but her voice was very distinct. It had far too many over- and undertones to be a match to the apology.

Then with the talk about a core, and whatever Genesis was?

I….. I think the apology was Queen Administrator's!

"Ooohhhhh this is so not good," I lamented, while the Emmas charged at each other again.

---

High in the skies, the two versions of Emma traded blows. "YOU TRIED TO KILL MY SISTER!" Emma bellowed, driving a punch into Emma's face which took the sound barrier as a suggestion.

"Our sister, she's ours!" Emma refuted, returning the energy right back at her counterpart, her voice raised in painful contradiction. The fight grew savage - a punch here, some hair pulling there.

Emma brushed off the clumsy attempt at a response and delivered a haymaker with both her fists to Emma's back. The human screamed in pain as she was punted straight down into the old asphalt that made up the Trainyard's outdoor pavement. "SHE'S NOT YOUR SISTER! YOU GAVE UP THAT RIGHT WHEN YOU SPAT ON HER EXISTENCE!"

Crawling back out of the dirt she'd eaten alongside remnants of asphalt, the fallen Emma struggled back to her feet. She stood tall and glared at her furious twin. "I was trying to make her strong!" She waved up at the still flying girl halfheartedly. "And it clearly worked."

That was the wrong thing to say, because Emma got a dangerous look in her eyes. "STRONG?!" she screamed. "YOU TORTURED HER! YOU BETRAYED HER, YOU BETRAYED MOM, AND YOU BETRAYED ME!"

She held up a hand and began gathering an ever brightening pulse of solid orange light within it.

"YOU TRIED TO FUCKING KILL HER! I DON'T HAVE HALF AN OUNCE OF THE STRENGTH TAYLOR HAS AND NEITHER DO YOU, AND THAT WAS BEFORE YOU DID ANYTHING!"

Emma winced at the harsh light cast from her twin's gathering attack and held up her own hand, mirroring it. "I know!" she called up, flinching at the sudden spike of pain one of her ribs sent her. "But you're living proof I was right!"

Emma's eye twitched, the charged air shivered as her attack intensified, and she stopped holding back.

Before Emma could even blink, the pulse in the flier's hand lashed out and burned her into the asphalt. The rock underneath, and the loose gravel, immediately melted into a bed of lava.

It wasn't her first jaunt into a pool of molten rock, but the other times she wasn't being pressed down into it by a constant bombardment of intense plasma. It was starting to tax her transfer rate.

The beam ended, and just as Emma was about to start attempting to extract herself from the small puddle of lava she found herself in, her own face appeared right in front of her.

Snarling.

"You want strength?" Emma's twin asked, eyes glowing a sickly orange. She reached up and grasped her chin in a vice like grip, pushing her down into the lava. Her voice was deadly still, soft and quiet instead of the overwhelming boom it had been before. "I'll show you how wrong you are."

Her hand began to heat up. It quickly went past flesh melting levels and eclipsed plasma ignition a moment later. The air around them started to ignite in turn, all while Emma struggled in the otherworldly grip and control of whatever Taylor had made to replace her.

She saw her own face twisted into an image intended to induce fear.

It bothered her tremendously. And, you know, also scared the shit out of her.

But it was the guilt that rose up that got to her. Especially the guilt. The guilt was always the worst.

Emma had to practice those looks in the mirror to pull them off. She wasn't very good at being malicious naturally. If she was honest with herself, she wasn't very good after training, either.

That's why she knew exactly what Taylor had seen. Her, like she saw herself now.

A monster.

She started to cry, but the tears evaporated in the plasma surrounding them. The other Emma brought her face a little closer to her and sneered.

"Aww, what's that?" she cooed mockingly, a fake pout to her lips. "Not stwong enough?!"

Another burst of temperature increase erupted across them.

Emma's clothes did not survive. Her power was barely able to keep her intact in the overwhelming inferno. Of course the other Emma didn't have either of those problems, and a small part of Emma not focused on survival remarked on just how unfair that was.

Emma's twin was pristine, of course.

Except for the ugly scowl on her face, marring the person who she used to be.

"You're…" she gasped, choking on the flames, "a- a monster."

Emma's face leaned in ever closer and she locked her eyes on the originals. "Oh Emma," she faux sweetly said, "this isn't me. A monster? That's what you are." She closed her eyes and shook her head, then opened them and smiled crookedly. "I'm just channeling Taylor's feelings for you. She's watching us, after all."

Emma's eyes went wide and she sobbed harder. "She's- she can see this?!"

Emma nodded, uncaring. "She can see the whole planet if she wants to. She's watching us right now." She leaned closer and almost kissed her twin, the swelteringly hot air being blown onto Emma's lips not helping her power in the least. "And she's doing nothi-"

"EMMA, STOP!" Taylor's voice interjected from the side, cutting off the monster from completing her sentence.

Taylor appeared almost like a specter, hovering at the periphery of the swirling heat and liquid fire.

The fight and drive seemed to vanish from Emma's eyes, their glow immediately dissipating. Her grip on Emma's chin slackened and the intense heat began to recede along with the plasma that their immediate surroundings had become. "What?" she asked normally, no evil face to be seen, "but!-"

Taylor crossed her arms, only barely visible through the slowly shrinking plasma maelstrom. "We are heroes, Emma!" she flatly declared, frowning. "Heroes don't do…"

She gestured around to the then melted to the ground Trainyard… or what was left of it. Emma and Emma were standing knee deep in a pool of boiling, bubbling molten rock, metal, and who knew what else. Taylor hovered over it, uncaring about the laws of physics, but she did not seem impressed with the pool either.

"This."

Emma sobbed again and took in the blazing light radiating from her sister. "T-Taylor-" she began to sputter, but found herself cut off.

Taylor looked at her with obvious disdain, but also somehow compassion. After everything she did to the taller… and now that Emma's attention was on her, much curvier girl, she didn't understand how she could possibly hold that for her, but was relieved to see it.

"I'm saying this out loud for your benefit, Emma," Taylor tersely informed her, arms still crossed.

Emma opened her mouth to ask what, but wasn't able to say anything after what Taylor said next.

"Photon Heatsink, disengage Ascension Protocols and give full control to host."

Emma didn't understand what exactly Taylor said, but she did notice when her power seemingly unlocked. The limitations she'd found it to have all vanished and suddenly she was capable of so much… more.

Her power also withdrew from her, in a way, and the constant light she saw around Parahumans… dulled. Lost its allure. Her mind cleared for the first time since she triggered in that alley, a fog she'd never even known was there lifting away.

She stared at Taylor, the sight of her sister looking very unhappy with her, and felt the presence of her twin like a lead weight.

…What did I do?!

The memories of exactly what she'd perpetuated, the torture and misery and anguish she'd inflicted upon her sister, rushed in. For the first time in a long time, it was entirely untainted by her own power. Overwhelmed by guilt, she collapsed to her knees in the molten lava.

"I'm… a monster," she whimpered, as a new wave of sobbed tears rushed forth from her eyes. The torrent of memories built until a crescendo of misery descended upon her… and she wailed.

...Aaand she started crying.

Great.

"Pick her up, take her home, and get her, or make her, some clothes," I commanded my Emma.

The authority in my voice cut through the lingering chaos. Despite the surreal battleground and the remnants of her cataclysmic power, my version of Emma hesitated only a heartbeat before obeying.

She was stunned by everything that had just happened, but her Shard-enhanced mind turned over it quickly. "Taylor, the hell?" she asked me. She did near instantly pick up the wailing, sobbing form of my ex… or who the fuck knew, now, sister, to comply with at least part of the command. "Photon Heatsink, that's her Shard-"

I cut her off by glaring daggers at her, feeling just the tiniest bit of satisfaction when she flinched. "Long story that I'm still trying to work out. Likely some extremely heavily modified Shard drives are responsible." I intensified my glare and pointed back across the city towards my house. "Go get her some clothes and take care of her. We will talk about this," I finished, waving around to the utterly flattened and melted Trainyard, "later."

Emma looked like she wanted to protest, but one look at my very unimpressed face had her bowing her head. "Yes, Taylor," she acquiesced, "I'll see you at home."

A moment later she pulled her and her original through a portal to my living room, and it was just me hovering above what looked more like a volcanic caldera than a rail yard.

"What a mess," I lamented, sighing. I shook my head at her actions. "Emma's never gonna stop making trouble for me, is she?"

Internally, I was torn. On one hand, Emma had been right, she was channeling my emotions about... Emma. Into trying to kill Emma.

The lack of easy distinction was already confusing, and it would just get worse.

Even now I had several threads dedicated to working out the negative feelings I had about and towards her. Since, well, clearly I fucking had to or else one of the weapons of planetary destruction linked to me would just go off on their own and try to work them out for me if I didn't. My anger for this particular destruction engine's defiant recklessness burned pretty hot, but not as hot as what I felt towards the original Emma.

Working out my emotions for her involved engaging in acts of violence against simulated targets, or in the case of the thread dedicated to repeatedly reducing the regenerating field of Emma clones (sans brains) on my Earth's Moon to ash every few seconds, not so simulated targets. In the millions.

I had a lot of anger for her. A whole heaping fuckton. And Emotional Management Shards were just that, management. They apparently did exactly jack shit for actually resolving the issues causing those emotions that needed to be managed.

There were zero therapy Shards. Or at least none that I'd found or encountered. Dad hadn't given me any, which one would assume he would if he had them, and the lack of their existence as a whole would explain Zion's less than stellar way of dealing with his wife's death.

And yes, his wife. Not my mom. If my dreams were to be believed, the echoes of the Shard I had taken over, then Eden was never my mom.

Those dreams had proven accurate with Emma, so I was inclined to start considering the possibility. Occam's Razor and all that. Usually that would present Eden being my mom as the logical assumption… but as of my new 'memories', the more complicated answer ironically enough now had less assumptions.

And that was the other side of myself, torn across the indecisive void I now found myself within. Emma… the moment I'd reset her Shard, her behavior had changed. She regretted what she'd done, she dropped to her knees, hell she was still wailing on my couch in the arms of a reluctant twin for crying out loud!

Could I really blame her for anything if it had all been the work of a Shard? Not even an enemy one, at that! Two of them, in this case, my own and the one my mom and my Shard hand crafted for Emma in the first place.

Now that was a shocker. My mom was not only a Parahuman, she was aware of my dad's true identity and one of the most infamous rogues in Brockton Bay history.

And, oh yeah, apparently the one that helped Administrator… or Queen Administrator, put together and activate what might as well be a superweapon level hacking and administrator's suite for Shards themselves.

I wasn't Eden's superweapon. I was my mom's.

---

Armsmaster was the first to get to what remained of the Trainyard. He found me hovering above it, clearly conflicted about his presence, and with my arms crossed.

With my previous impression of him, the false one, I'd have expected him to really screw up this situation. Instead, he tensed, examined me, then the still cooling blend of metal, asphalt, rock, and sandglass, before sighing.

He very pointedly stepped away from his frankly pretty awesome motorcycle and towards me. He did not bring his weapon.

"What happened here, Taylor?" he asked. Clearly, calmly, and with no room for misunderstanding.

I studied him for a few long seconds. I couldn't really figure out how I was going to answer that. Armsmaster didn't have the background needed to understand what the hell was going on with me. Shit, I barely knew. And he was also the leader of the Protectorate. The same people who called SOPHIA a Hero.

But. He didn't seem angry with me. And his first words weren't a demand to know what I'd done to the BITCH, or why, though a few Shards informed me he fully intended to.

Whether because of my power or because of his duty and honor, I couldn't tell. And it didn't really matter, in the end. He'd proven I was right to trust him personally before. My desperate need for a rock in all this, which my Dad was trying to give me to be fair, and experience as a true Hero (which my Dad couldn't) drove me to open up to him.

"My ex best friend and the Friendbringer I made on accident using a younger version of her had a fight."

Armsmaster's response to that was kind of obvious in hindsight.

"...What?"

I sighed and shook my head. "Come on, I'll explain properly," I declared while I gestured at a section of lava nearby him to force it to cool and form into heavy stone-metal mix chairs. "At least until the rest of the Protectorate get here."

Credit to him, he didn't flinch even when the chair flowed into form and cooled off with a theatrical flair of steam right in front of him.

---

"...Thank you for treating me like a friend, given… certain individuals and your experiences with them," he stated after I basically poured out my heart to him. He was a surprisingly good listener. "I hope you don't hold this over the Protectorate's head for very long."

I quirked an eyebrow as the PRT sirens drew near. "For very long? Shouldn't you be pushing me for not at all?"

Armsmaster grimaced and crossed his arms, clunking his suit against itself. "However accidental, we still screwed up. I screwed up."

My other eyebrow joined my first. "And you take that personally?"

"Of course," he declared.

I looked askance at him, amused. He really is just like everybody else, huh? "Has anyone ever told you that you take on way too much responsibility?"

"Many. Hundreds of times. But the way I see it is, if I don't, who will? And whether I like it or not, Taylor, I seem to be an icon. You yourself look up to me, and you're apparently one of the most powerful people on this planet. I would be remiss in my duty as a hero, no, as a thinking being if I allowed myself to not take that faith in me seriously."

I was stunned. This guy… damn, there goes my hero worship skyrocketing again. "It's stuff like that which makes us look up to you," I mumbled, looking away to try and hide the blush on my face. My tone softened as my eyes drifted to the approaching vans - the Protectorate's armored presence signaling the arrival of a new responsibility. "And here comes the party, I guess."

"Don't worry, Taylor," Armsmaster declared, though the teasing smirk on his lips told me he had definitely heard my muttering, "it'll be fine."

---

Armsmaster and I stood side by side to watch the PRT vans squeal into position around us, doors opening already and dozens of armored officers leaping out in full gear. I spied Miss Militia, Dauntless, and another Parahuman I hadn't yet nabbed a Shard from exiting a couple of the vans. While I wasn't exactly in the mood, a Shard's a Shard, so I copied hers too.

And added it to my quickly growing review list.

After that, and checking to make sure nobody had detected what I'd done, I turned and looked up at the stoic hero by my side, frowning. The PRT were on course for us, and although they didn't look threatening, I could practically smell the fear and nervousness leaking off them with my body's senses alone, much less with the many, many Shard-side sensors I had tuned on my body's location.

I didn't like where this was going, and the worry that I'd have to get serious was climbing. "How much do I need to worry about holding back against these guys?" I asked, but he knew what I really meant.

"None," he declared, shocking me, but not as much as what he said next. "They're not here for you. We were initially deployed to find out who was screaming across the city at the top of their lungs before we got rerouted to this area to check the… fireworks."

...Did he just make a pun?

The knowing grin on his face said yes. His total lack of reaction otherwise said no.

Damn. He's good.

His words were proven when the officers didn't pay me much mind other than a few nodding my way. The brave ones, anyways. Most of them gave me and Armsmaster a wide berth. If they did come close, the only thing that happened was them moving around Armsmaster's suited form, his bike, and our chairs to then go spread around the still cooling lava lake.

Miss Militia and the Parahuman I didn't know headed towards us while Dauntless took to the air, slowly, probably to get some kind of aerial view. I idly upgraded his power's increments to help him fly faster, and got a small giggle as I was the only one who could really see him tumble around at a higher speed in the air until he got a handle on it. It was basically the middle of the night after all.

He sent me a dirty, yet thankful look.

I gave him a smug salute. Lisa was great for practicing those on.

Armsmaster continued filling me in like he hadn't seen me act my age or heard Dauntless report in his power boost. "Director Renick was very clear. We are to, and I'm only telling you this because my opinion is you'll find out anyways, 'please for the love of this planet don't piss her off any more than we already have on accident, and if you have any ideas on how to ask her for help you do not need my approval.' I may be paraphrasing. He was quite lengthy about it."

… He was teasing me. Again.

What is it with the male authority figures in my life all automatically deciding to mess with me? Do I have something on my face?!

Only after a moment, and a giggle from Miss Militia, did I realize I'd grumbled that out loud.

"Yes," Armsmaster unhelpfully replied. "Your face when we do is adorably annoyed."

"...That-that was rhetorical!"

 

[NavigatorNobilis]

Damn. This Armsmaster is gold. I could honestly read an entire book where he's the only POD.

 

[206er]

Thanks for the chapter.

He really is just like everybody else, huh?

Click to shrink...

I haven't read Worm, and know mostly because of fanfic, but this here is the reason I always like your Armsmaster. He's human, instead of the more common robotic-asshole-ish one.

 

[Gindjurra]

Damn. This Armsmaster is gold. I could honestly read an entire book where he's the only POD.

Click to shrink...

I haven't read Worm, and know mostly because of fanfic, but this here is the reason I always like your Armsmaster. He's human, instead of the more common robotic-asshole-ish one.

Click to shrink...

People always forget he used to spend a lot of time in close proximity to Mouse Protector, yet has never gone postal over it, or ended up spending time in a straitjacket, despite having the same conflict drive all parahumans do.

 

[NavigatorNobilis]

People always forget he used to spend a lot of time in close proximity to Mouse Protector, yet has never gone postal over it, or ended up spending time in a straitjacket, despite having the same conflict drive all parahumans do.

Click to shrink...

I mean, looking at canon... Some forced time off in a hug-myself-sweater would probably have done him some good.

 

[deathgeonous]

Ah, a good and quick update. I like both. Hehe. Still, a good update was given here. And now for the fallout of this chapter, in the next chapter of...

 

[SwiftBlizz]

Oh man, Rebecca Costa-Brown is gonna have kittens when it dawns on her that Path to fucking Victory is responsible for facilitating their new Entity situation.

"This is somehow your fault Contessa! I can feel it itching in my time-locked bones... ಠ⁠益⁠ಠ" - RCB
"*How can I get more nude [ABANDON] pics?* ｡⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠｡" - Fortuna

 

[TCGM]

Wasn't even a year this time guys

Also this is @CV12Hornet 's fault

---

Fourth

Chapter 14

Reckoning​

The PRT cleared out around 3 AM. Not because they wanted to-I could feel Renick's frustration through the emergency communications network-but because Armsmaster made it clear that further questioning could happen at a later date, and that pressing an Entity-level intelligence at four in the morning was a tactical mistake of legendary proportions.

He was right, of course. But I appreciated him saying it out loud for the bureaucrats in the vans.

Miss Militia had tried to make small talk about the new Dauntless power upgrade. I'd deflected by complimenting her cape work during the Ash Beast response, after the Underwearening, which made her smile behind her flag-scarf. She had a good smile. I could see why people followed her lead.

"You didn't have to do that," she said quietly, glancing at Dauntless who was conferring with Battery near one of the vans. "The upgrade. We're here to help you, not the other way around."

"Maybe I wanted to," I replied. "Maybe I'm tired of everyone treating kindness like it's a trap."

She studied me for a long moment. "You're still not what I expected, you know."

"What did you expect?"

"Someone angrier. More... alien. Especially after, well..." She gestured vaguely, and I knew she meant Sophia. The locker. Everything.

I laughed, but it came out hollow. "Give it time. I'm working on the alien part." I crossed my arms, feeling the weight of everything settle back on my shoulders. "And make no mistake-I am still monumentally pissed off at the organization that let someone like Sophia Hess wear a hero's costume while she was tormenting me at school. At the system that was so desperate for warm bodies that they turned a blind eye to what she really was."

Miss Militia's expression tightened, but she didn't look away. "You have every right to be."

"I know I do." I met her eyes. "But Armsmaster made it clear that you-the individuals-didn't know. That it was an institutional failure, not a personal one. And Deputy Director Renick..." I paused, remembering what Armsmaster had told me about Renick's orders. "'Please for the love of this planet don't piss her off any more than we already have on accident.'"

Miss Militia winced. "He said that?"

"Armsmaster may have been paraphrasing." I shrugged. "Point is, I'm angry at the PRT. At the system. At whoever decided Sophia's usefulness outweighed basic due diligence. But you personally? Armsmaster? Dauntless? You're trying. You showed up tonight not to contain me or control me, but because you wanted to help. Because you were worried." I looked away. "That matters. Even when I'm too angry to fully appreciate it."

Miss Militia reached out like she wanted to touch my shoulder, then thought better of it. "For what it's worth? I hope you don't lose that distinction. Between the people and the institution. A lot of capes who get burned by the system... they stop being able to see the difference."

"Yeah, well." I gave her a tired smile. "Armsmaster asked me not to hold it over the Protectorate's head for very long. I'm trying. But institutional trust isn't something you rebuild overnight, especially when that institution was calling my bully a hero while she was making my life hell."

"No," Miss Militia said quietly. "It's not. But the fact that you're trying-that you can still see us as individuals worth trusting-that says more about you than you probably realize."

She shifted her weight, and I could feel her nervousness spike through her Shard. Whatever she wanted to ask, it was making her genuinely uncomfortable.

"Taylor, I..." She stopped, started again. "Can I ask you something? Something that might be... sensitive?"

I raised an eyebrow. "More sensitive than everything else tonight?"

"Possibly." She took a breath. "When I triggered, I... I saw something. In my vision. There were these massive... creatures? Entities? They looked like worms, but impossibly huge, covered in crystalline structures, moving through space." Her voice dropped. "Armsmaster said that what I saw-what I described to him years ago when I first joined-he said you're... that those things are what you are now?"

I stared at her. "You saw the Entities? During your trigger?"

She nodded slowly. "I didn't understand what I was seeing at the time. I thought it was just trauma, my mind breaking under the stress. But Armsmaster said-" She stopped, looking uncertain. "Is that what you are?"

I blinked, processing that. Then I dove into my Shard network, specifically into Weapons Sentinel-Miss Militia's Shard. And there, buried in the connection protocols and trigger event data, was something I hadn't noticed before. A clever little exploit of the Noctis Cape "perfect memory" function.

The trigger vision hadn't faded like it did for most capes. It was still there, perfectly preserved, filed away in her flawless memory. Every detail of what she'd seen during that moment of connection-the Entities in their true forms, crossing the void between dimensions, the sheer scale of what they were.

Most capes forgot the specifics of their trigger visions, the details fading like dreams. But Miss Militia's Shard had exploited her perfect memory to keep it crystal clear.

I started laughing. I couldn't help it. The sheer cleverness of it-the way Weapons Sentinel had turned a defensive power into a perfect recording of information that was never meant to be retained.

Miss Militia looked alarmed. "Taylor? Are you-"

"Your Shard is a sneaky bastard," I said, still chuckling. "I didn't realize how sneaky until just now. Most trigger visions fade. The memory of what you saw during connection gets blurry, dreamlike. But your Shard exploited your Noctis Cape status and perfect memory to keep everything from your trigger vision perfectly preserved. Every detail of what the Entities actually look like, stored permanently in your head."

Her eyes widened. "It-what? But I thought everyone remembered their trigger?"

"They remember the trauma. The event that caused it. But the actual vision during the moment of connection? That usually fades. Becomes vague, hard to describe." I shook my head, genuinely impressed. "But you? You've got a perfect snapshot of what the Entities really are, filed away in your memory banks. That's actually brilliant. Completely within the technical parameters of your power, but way more information retention than the Entities probably intended."

Miss Militia looked like she didn't know whether to be disturbed or intrigued. "So what I saw was... real? Those things were actually there?"

"Yeah." I leaned back against the wall. "Those were the Entities. The source of all parahuman powers. Massive multi-dimensional beings that travel through space looking for ways to solve entropy and the heat death of the universe. They're made up of trillions of Shards-pieces like the one giving you your power-all working together as a distributed intelligence."

She was quiet for a long moment. "And you're... one of them now?"

"Sort of." I tried to figure out how to explain it. "I'm still me-still Taylor Hebert, still human. But I'm also connected to and merged with Queen Administrator, one of the most important Shards from one of those Entities. So I'm both things at once. Human girl and cosmic horror, trying to figure out how to exist without losing myself."

"The things I saw in my vision-they were so vast. So alien." Her voice was quiet. "How do you deal with being that?"

"Honestly? I'm still figuring it out." I gave her a tired smile. "Some days are better than others."

"But you're still you," Miss Militia said firmly. "I can see it. You're not some emotionless alien wearing Taylor Hebert as a mask. You care. You feel. You're trying to do the right thing even when it's hard."

"That's what my dad said." I rubbed my face. "I'm trying to believe it."

"You should." She shifted again, building up courage. "Can I ask-what were they doing? In the vision I saw, they were moving through this... void? Space? I couldn't tell. But they were heading somewhere with purpose."

"Probably traveling between worlds," I said. "That's what they do-cross between parallel Earths, spreading Shards to different versions of humanity, running their cycles. They're looking for data, for solutions to entropy. Each world they visit is like a massive experiment in conflict and evolution."

"That's..." She trailed off. "That's a lot bigger than I expected."

"Yeah, well." I gave her a tired smile. "Turns out the cosmic horror is real, and I'm part of it now. Lucky me."

"But you're trying to change it," Miss Militia said. "What you did with Dauntless's power-removing his limiter. What you did with mine-" She glanced at her hands where her power manifested. "You're not just continuing their cycle. You're trying to make something different."

"Trying being the operative word." I glanced toward where Dauntless was still hovering, clearly trying not to stare but failing miserably. "Though I think someone else has questions too."

She followed my gaze and snorted. "He's been doing that since you upgraded his power. Battery's about ready to drag him over here herself."

"How long do you think we have before she snaps?"

"Based on the look on her face?" Miss Militia checked her teammate's position. "Maybe three more minutes."

"Better make them count then." I turned my attention back to her. "Anything else you want to know? About what you saw, what the Entities are, any of it?"

Miss Militia thought for a moment. "In my vision, there were two of them. Moving together, but they felt... different from each other. Was that significant?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "That was the cycle pair. Scion and Eden-though those aren't their real names, just what we call them. They travel in pairs, working together. One provides the bulk of the combat and resource gathering, the other handles planning and administration. They were coming to Earth-to all the Earths-to run their cycle here." I looked up at the sky. "But Eden died in the crash. Her Shards got distributed without proper restrictions, which is why some powers are so broken. And Scion..." I trailed off. "Scion's still around. Still playing hero. But he's... not all there. Eden was the one who did the thinking. Without her, he's just going through the motions."

"Is he dangerous?" Miss Militia asked quietly.

"Potentially. Very potentially." I chose my words carefully. "He's incredibly powerful—we're talking about a full Entity with trillions of Shards. Literal trillions, all working together as a distributed intelligence. Right now he seems content to just save people and move on. As long as nobody convinces him that humanity isn't worth protecting, he should be stable." I paused, feeling the weight of what I wasn't saying. "But if something changes... if someone gets through to him the wrong way... there's not much anyone could do to stop him."

"Not even you?" Miss Militia's voice was very quiet.

I laughed, but it came out bitter. "I'm barely past a few hundred Shards. I'm a tiny Entity compared to Scion. He's a mature, fully-developed Entity from a species that's been doing this for millions of years, with literally trillions of Shards at his disposal. I'm..." I gestured vaguely at myself. "I'm what happens when a human girl accidentally merges with one really important Shard and starts collecting more. I'm growing, yeah, but I'm nowhere near his weight class."

"So we just... hope he stays stable?"

"Pretty much." I met her eyes. "That's part of why I'm trying to keep a relatively low profile. Draw too much attention, make too many waves, and I risk catching his notice. If Scion decides I'm a threat or a resource worth harvesting..." I didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.

Miss Militia's face had gone pale. "That's why you haven't just... fixed everything. All the broken powers, all the problems. You're trying not to attract attention."

"Partially. I also don't want to break things worse by messing with systems I don't fully understand yet." I shrugged. "But yeah. Growing carefully, staying under the radar, hoping Scion doesn't wake up enough to notice there's a baby Entity running around his territory." I paused. "My dad could probably give him a fight, but even he couldn't take Scion down alone. And a fight between two Entities on Earth would..." I trailed off, letting her imagination fill in the blanks.

"Destroy everything," Miss Militia finished quietly.

"Yeah. So. Low profile it is. At least for now. At least until I'm bigger, stronger, have enough Shards that I could actually do something if things went wrong." I looked up at the sky. "Hopefully that day never comes."

We sat in heavy silence for a moment before Battery's voice rang out. "Oh for-Dauntless, just GO TALK TO HER already! You've been hovering there for fifteen minutes like a nervous puppy!"

Miss Militia and I both turned to see Dauntless's ears go red beneath his helmet.

"I wasn't-" he started.

"You were," Armsmaster interjected from where he was working on his bike. "You've been attepting to discern her atomic structure for seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds."

I couldn't help but laugh at the specific timing. "Come on over, Dauntless. I don't bite. Usually."

He descended slowly, landing with more grace than before-probably still adjusting to the upgraded flight speed. Battery gave him an encouraging push toward us, and he stumbled slightly before catching himself.

"I, uh." He cleared his throat. "Hi."

"Hi," I replied, grinning. "You have questions about your power?"

"I wasn't staring!" Dauntless protested, his ears going red beneath his helmet.

"You were staring," Armsmaster interjected without looking up from his bike's maintenance panel.

"Okay, fine!" Dauntless threw up his hands. "What did you do? My power feels... different. Faster. Like something was holding it back before and now it's not."

"Removed the throttle," I said simply. "Your Shard was deliberately limiting your charge rate. Probably to extend the Cycle. Now it's not."

Dauntless blinked. "That's it? You just... turned off a limiter?"

"Pretty much."

"Can you do that for everyone?"

The question hung in the air. I felt multiple Protectorate members suddenly paying very close attention.

"Theoretically?" I said carefully. "Yes. But I'm not going to. Because removing limitations without understanding why they exist is how you get people exploding from feedback loops, or their Shards eating their brains, or-" I gestured vaguely, "-other bad outcomes. Your limiter was safe to remove. Most aren't."

"Oh." Dauntless looked simultaneously relieved and disappointed. "That makes sense."

"Besides," I added, "if I went around power-boosting everyone, the PRT would have to redesign all their threat assessments. You're already stressed enough."

Battery snorted. "Understatement of the year."

Dauntless stepped back, clearly processing everything, and I felt the weight of multiple sets of eyes on me. The Protectorate members were watching, calculating, probably reporting everything back to their superiors. I could feel their Shards humming with nervous energy—Assault's kinetic absorption cycling uselessly, Velocity's time dilation twitching at the edges of perception.

And Battery. Her Shard sat quiet in a way that was distinctly different from the others. No connection to me, no thread I could follow back to the network. Just... emptiness where there should have been something.

Cauldron cape. I'd known that intellectually, but feeling the absence firsthand was strange. Like a gap in my awareness, a blind spot in my Entity-sense.

She was watching me too, and there was something careful in her posture. Waiting. Probably wondering if I'd call her out, if I'd expose what she was. What she'd paid for.

I met her eyes across the distance and made a decision.

"Battery," I called out, and she stiffened. "Come here for a second?"

She exchanged a glance with Assault, who looked confused but gave her an encouraging nod. She approached slowly, professionally, but I could see the tension in her shoulders.

When she was close enough, I kept my voice low. "The favor you owe me. Consider it paid."

Her eyes went wide. "What? But I haven't—I didn't do anything—"

"You showed up tonight," I said simply. "You came because you were worried, not because you had to. That's enough." I paused, then added even quieter, "And before anyone gets ideas about asking why there was a favor to owe in the first place, or what makes your situation special, or any other invasive questions—they can back off. It's none of their business. Your business is your own."

I dropped my voice to barely a whisper, the quietest I could manage. "That means you too, Armsmaster."

There was a sharp jerk of movement from where Armsmaster stood by his bike. His head snapped around, and I watched him hastily adjust something on his helmet—redirecting his audio pickups away from us, pointing them deliberately toward the street instead.

Understanding flashed across her face, followed by relief so profound I could see her shoulders sag slightly. She knew that I knew. And that I wasn't going to say anything.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Don't mention it. Seriously." I gave her a tired smile. "You're a good hero, Battery. Don't let anyone make you feel like you're not."

She nodded, blinking rapidly, and stepped back. Assault was giving us a curious look, but Battery just shook her head at him—a clear 'later' gesture.

Miss Militia was watching the exchange with interest but didn't comment. Whatever she thought she'd witnessed, she kept it to herself.

Before anyone could say anything else, Armsmaster's voice cut through the lingering tension. "Alright, that's enough for tonight." He stood by his bike, addressing the assembled Protectorate members with professional authority. "We have Taylor's contact information. Further discussions can wait until a reasonable hour. Everyone back to base for debriefing."

There were murmurs of agreement from the heroes. Miss Militia nodded, already moving to coordinate the departure. Dauntless gave me one last curious look before taking to the air. Battery and Assault headed toward their patrol vehicle, Battery's shoulders noticeably more relaxed than before.

I caught Armsmaster's eye and gave him a small nod of thanks. He returned it with the barest hint of acknowledgment—his way of saying it's my job, but you're welcome.

As the Protectorate heroes packed up their equipment and headed out, I couldn't help myself. The interrogation attempts had been so earnestly awkward that I decided to leave them a little gift. With a thought, I pushed a subtle command through Miss Militia's Shard—unlocking a secondary application she'd never accessed: the ability to summon weapons from the Shard's own hard-light database instead of just pulling from external sources. Nothing stupidly dangerous like a black hole gun, though Weapons Sentinel's database certainly held such things, just... more options. A little reward for trying.

The last PRT van pulled away, its taillights disappearing into the darkness. The Trainyard fell quiet around us, officially designated a containment zone pending further investigation. I was ready to phase out of my skin.

Armsmaster remained by his bike, watching me with that patient expression of his. "Go home," he said simply. "You need to sleep. You've had enough for one night."

I nodded, too tired to argue. He was right.

"And Taylor?" He paused, as if considering what to say next. "Your people will be waiting for you. Don't make them wait long."

I understood what he wasn't saying: the Friendbringers, Emma, whoever else had made it back to the house. They'd be anxious. Worried. Wanting to know what happened.

He nodded, and I could feel the weight of unspoken conversation between us-the kind that would happen later, when everything wasn't so raw. For now, there was just the acknowledgment that we'd both seen something tonight that couldn't be unseen, and we'd both have to sit with that.

"Thank you," I said, because he deserved it. "For being... you."

A pause. Then: "You're welcome. And Taylor? You're going to be okay. It's going to be messy as hell, but you will be."

I wanted to believe him.

I didn't, and I knew his detector would tell him that if I said anything, so I just nodded at him again and turned to walk away. I was trying to be cool, for what it was worth. The Trainyard, despite having been chilled to a solidification point by me, still felt like it carried the heat of the fight-Emma against the Friendbringer I'd made in her image, neither of them giving an inch.

The Trainyard fell silent behind me as I stepped into the shadow of a half-collapsed shipping container. I could have opened a portal straight to my bedroom-would have been the smart thing to do, all things considered. But something about the weight of the night made me want to feel the distance between here and home.

I decided to metaphorically spread my wings instead, and took to the air.

---

The flight home was exactly what I needed. Cold air cutting through the mental fog, the city lights below me small and manageable from this height. Up here, the complexity of Shards and Entities and the mess of Emma-both Emmas-felt like something I could actually process instead of just react to.

I thought about what Armsmaster had said. You're going to be okay. And you know what? He might actually be right. Yeah, I had a dad who was an ancient Entity pretending to be human. A mom whose consciousness was saved in my Shard's memory banks. Emma, who didn't trigger naturally but was deployed as a host-a protector turned weapon through hijacked programming. Three Endbringers who used to destroy cities and now just wanted ice cream.

It was completely insane. But it was also mine. My weird, impossible family that I was building from the broken pieces of what should have been.

I banked left, following the coastline. The ocean stretched out to my right, dark and endless. How many times had Levi crossed that water, building waves tall enough to drown cities? How many people had died in waters like these?

And now he cried over spilled ice cream and called me his creator and wanted to help people instead of destroying them.

The absurdity of it made me laugh. Because if I could turn an Endbringer into a person who cried over ice cream, what else could I do?

Below me, Brockton Bay sprawled out in its familiar mess of industrial zones and residential districts. The Trainyard was far behind now, just another dark section of warehouses. From this height, the scars of gang violence were invisible-just streets and buildings and streetlights. It looked normal. Safe. Like nothing had changed.

But everything had changed. And maybe that was okay.

I could feel the Shard network pulsing beneath my awareness, a constant hum of connection to every powered person in the city. Miss Militia's new hardlight parameters settling into her Shard like a key in a lock. Dauntless's upgraded acceleration still humming with newness. Sophia's permanently altered power manifesting as glittering pink mockery. All the incremental changes I made because I could, because I was learning how, because I was growing into what I was becoming.

The thought didn't terrify me anymore. It was just... true. I was powerful. I was still learning. And I was going to make mistakes, but I'd deal with them as they came.

I flew higher, until the cold bit through my shirt and the air thinned. Up here, I could see the curvature of the Earth. Could sense every Shard on the Eastern Seaboard. Could reach out and touch the consciousness of any Parahuman if I wanted to.

And the amazing thing? I could do that. I was an Entity. A baby Entity, sure, but still something incredible and impossible and real. I'd gone from being bullied in high school to being able to sense powers across half a continent in less than two weeks.

Part of me still missed normal. Missed being just Taylor Hebert who worried about homework and college applications. But that life was gone, and mourning it forever wouldn't bring it back.

The person I used to be had nearly died in a locker full of rotting tampons and toxic waste. The me I was now, a Human Entity, the new replacement for Queen Administrator, was something new. Something that still felt impossible even though it was real.

The question was how to hold my new mantle without losing the parts of me that mattered.

I thought about the data burst from Queen Administrator. The memories that weren't mine but were also completely mine. Annette-my mom-working with QA to build the Shard control suite, the interface that let me rip and tear and command other Shards in ways the QA Shard alone could barely dream of. Emma's Shard, crafted with love and care to protect me.

And then Annette died, and QA somehow became shockingly alive, immediately panicked, and everything went wrong.

Had QA known what Alternate Submersion would do to Emma? Had she cared? Or was forcing a trigger event more important than preserving the humanity of the girl she'd literally designed to be my protector?

I didn't have answers. Just more questions stacking on top of questions.

The house came into view-home, still looking exactly as it always had. The lights were on downstairs. Normal. No signs of the violence that had happened earlier, no indication that Emma had been fighting herself just hours ago.

I descended slowly, landing on the roof instead of using a portal. I needed another moment of quiet before facing what waited inside.

The roof was cold under my feet. For just a second, I let myself be sixteen years old and tired instead of an Entity trying to figure out how to exist in a world that couldn't contain me.

The shingles under my feet were the same ones Dad and I had patched last summer. We'd spent an entire Saturday up here, him telling terrible jokes while I handed him tools. It had been hot and exhausting and completely normal. I'd had no idea what he truly was, no idea the effective role I would eventually be inheriting, nothing. My mom had been gone, I was being bullied, and my Dad and I had a rare moment of connection doing something so utterly normal.

I missed normal, a little. Maybe a lot.

But normal was missing in action, bringing it back was going to take a while. All I could do in then meantime was move forward and try not to break everything I touched.

I took a breath, steadied myself, and went inside.

---

I found Ziz first, perched on the kitchen counter eating cereal directly from the box with no milk. She gave me a look that was part amusement, part concern.

"She's been asking questions," Ziz said without preamble. "Emma. Our Emma's been giving her answers. I've been trolling her because she deserves it and also because watching a human process what they are is objectively hilarious."

The intrusive thoughts won. "...How hilarious are we talking?"

"She asked if you were a god. Emma said 'basically.' I said 'only on weekdays.'" Ziz paused, and there was something knowing in her expression. "She then asked if that was true and we had to explain that no, you're not a god, just... something close, that shouldn't exist by normal rules. Something that maybe shouldn't be waking up at all." A slight smile played at the corner of her mouth. "Emma asked if that made her twin something that shouldn't exist. Our Emma said 'pretty much.' It got quiet after that."

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. "Ziz..."

"What? I'm being honest! It's hilarious watching her grapple with bone-deep dread!" She stuffed another handful of cereal in her mouth. "Though, to be fair, I've also been providing emotional support. I patted her head twice. Very comforting."

"You patted her head."

"With a wing! It's different when it's a wing."

Despite everything, I felt a smile tug at my lips. "Where is she?"

"Living room. She's been sitting on the couch for the past hour. Not moving. Just... existing, or maybe wishing she didn't. I think she's having an existential crisis." Ziz tilted her head. "Actually, I know she's having an existential crisis. I can see her immediate future and it's 73% crying, 20% more questions, and 7% attempting to process trauma through sheer force of will."

"And how's that working out for her?"

"Not well. The crying percentage keeps going up."

I sighed. "Of course it does. Where's everyone else?"

"Levi's in his room building a water sculpture of tonight's fight. It's very dramatic. Lots of waves." Ziz's expression turned fond. "Ben's meditating in the basement. He does that when things get intense. Says it helps him remember he's choosing to be calm, not just defaulting to it."

"And Dad?"

"Garage. He's stress-Tinkering. Which is weird because he's not actually a Tinker, but somehow he's still building... something. I didn't look too closely. Might have been a perpetual motion machine. Might have been a coffee maker. With Danny, it's hard to tell. And I mnight be the best Tinker in the world, but we both know I can't measure up to you or your Dad."

"What about Lisa? Or Ciara?"

Ziz's wings rustled uncomfortably. "Lisa is sleeping with herself. Inference Engine is processing everything that happened. She's going to have questions when she wakes up. A lot of questions." She paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. "Ciara's in her room. Meditating, I think? Or communing with her Shards. Hard to tell the difference with her. She's been very quiet since the fight. Processing things in her own way."

Great. Just what I needed. More questions.

"You should probably go talk to Emma," Ziz said, her tone gentler now. "She keeps looking at the hallway like she wants to come find you but isn't sure if she's allowed. Keeps starting to stand up, then sitting back down. It's kind of sad, actually."

"Since when do you care about Emma being sad?"

"Since I remembered that she was a victim too." Ziz hopped off the counter, landing with surprising grace for someone with a hundred wings. "And since Emma pointed out that if we can forgive me for Simurgh-ing multiple cities, maybe we can forgive your original Emma for bullying under Shard influence."

"That's... surprisingly mature of you."

"I contain multitudes." She patted my shoulder with one wing. "Also, I'm over two decades old and was programmed for complex psychological manipulation. If I can't figure out basic emotional intelligence by now, that's just embarrassing."

I took a breath and headed toward the living room.

---

Emma looked small on the couch. That was the first thing that struck me-how small and fragile she looked, curled up in borrowed clothes that didn't quite fit right, her eyes red and swollen from crying. My Emma was beside her, one arm draped protectively over her twin's shoulders.

She looked up when I entered, and I saw the calculation in her eyes-the moment where she was trying to figure out if I was angry, if I was going to hurt her, if I was even still capable of seeing her as a person anymore.

"Hi," Emma said quietly. Her voice was hoarse, like she'd been crying for hours. Which she probably had.

"...Hi," I replied, and sat down in the armchair across from her. Not too close. Not too far. Somewhere in the middle where we could talk without either of us feeling trapped.

"I'm sorry," she said immediately. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know, I couldn't have known, and I didn't mean to-"

"I know."

"You don't even know what I was about to say-"

"You're sorry for bullying me. For helping Sophia. For making my life hell. For all of it." I held up a hand before she could interrupt. "I know. And right now, that doesn't really matter because we're all still processing what just happened."

"What did just happen?" Emma asked, and I heard the real question underneath: What are we?

I looked at my Emma. She gave me a shrug that said your call. But her hand squeezed her twin's shoulder-a gesture of support that made something in my chest ache.

"You know you have powers," I said carefully. "You've been using them-testing them. You survived being blasted into lava tonight. You tried to extract yourself from it." I watched her face, saw the confusion there. "But what you don't know is where they came from."

Emma leaned forward slightly, her full attention on me despite the tears still streaming down her face.

"You didn't trigger naturally," I continued. "Powers come from alien entities called Shards-pieces of massive cosmic beings that attach to humans during moments of extreme trauma. But you? Your Shard was hand-crafted. Custom built." I took a breath. "My mom and Queen Administrator-that's the Shard I have, one of the most important ones-they worked together to design your power specifically. They deployed it to you when we were little kids because they wanted you to be able to protect me. You were always meant to be my protector."

Emma's eyes went wide. "I was... but I thought-when did-" She stopped, confusion warring with realization on her face. "You're saying I've always had them? Since we were kids?"

"Yes. The power was always there, working to keep you safe. To help you grow strong enough to stand beside me." I paused, the weight of what I'd learned settling heavily. "Your Shard is called Photon Heatsink. It was built with love, Emma. With the specific purpose of protecting me by making sure you could stand beside me and keep me safe."

She stared at me, processing. "But then... why did I..."

"When my mom died in that car accident, Queen Administrator panicked. She couldn't activate me as the primary host without a trigger event-there are rules, restrictions built into how powers work. So she did something terrible." I watched Emma's face carefully. "She hijacked your Shard. Took control of Photon Heatsink and forced it to run a manipulation protocol called 'Alternate Submersion.' I saw it in the memory logs-she overrode your Shard's normal functions and turned it into a weapon. Something designed to manipulate you. To force my trigger event so I could become what she needed me to be."

Emma's face went pale. "No. No, that's not-I chose-"

"Did you?" I asked, and my voice came out harder than I intended. "I shut down the Alternate Submersion protocols at the Trainyard. You felt it, didn't you? When they disengaged?"

Emma's eyes went wide with recognition. "My power... it changed. It felt like something lifted-like fog clearing from my head-" She stopped, her hands starting to shake. "There was something controlling me and I didn't even know-"

"You weren't making free choices, Emma. Queen Administrator was puppeting you through your own Shard. Using the power that was supposed to protect me to hurt me instead." I leaned forward. "I need you to tell me what it was like. What did the manipulation actually do to you?"

Emma stared at me, and I saw the moment she understood what I was asking. That I needed to know what the manipulation actually did. That I hadn't been there to see it. That understanding how Alternate Submersion worked mattered.

"I..." Her voice broke. "I need to tell you. You need to know what it was like."

My Emma shifted closer to her twin, settling more firmly beside her on the couch. She'd been commanded to take care of Emma, and once she'd had it explained about the Shard manipulation, the anger had drained away. Now she just looked sad. Understanding. She reached out and gently took her twin's hand, intertwining their fingers.

Emma's face crumpled at the touch. She wrapped her free arm around herself, tears starting to stream down her face. "I-" she choked out, then stopped. Her whole body started trembling. "I can't-I don't-"

I tensed, not sure what to do. This wasn't anger I could fight or a problem I could fix. This was grief. Trauma. The slow-motion collapse of someone's entire understanding of themselves.

"Tell me," I said quietly. "Whatever you can manage."

 

[SwiftBlizz]

Welcome back OP.

Nice dealing with the Protectorate heroes!

When things finally calm down, it will sure be weird for everyone else that there are two Emmas around; flanking Taylor as hyper dangerous bodyguards.

Cheers!

 

[TCGM]

Welcome back OP.

Nice dealing with the Protectorate heroes!

When things finally calm down, it will sure be weird for everyone else that there are two Emmas around; flanking Taylor as hyper dangerous bodyguards.

Cheers!

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the welcome back!

It'll be very weird, but hey, twinsies, and I'm sure quite a few people on the Internet will have new fuel for their dreams

The real fun stuff will be when the Barnes family properly learn about having an extra kid as more than just a what the hell is that on the TV